Andreas Barth, FIZ Karlsruhe, Germany and Werner Marx, Max Planck Institute for Solid State Research, Stuttgart, Germany, quantified and analyzed known compounds and correlated them with the literature in the given field. While the compound information is taken from the Chemical Abstracts (CAS) compound file, the linked literature is taken from the CAS literature file. By combing this information, they create a so-called compound landscape. This data can be used to identify areas within compound classes that have been or currently are intensely studied (hot topics) or to reveal areas with low research activity and potential for future research within a compound class.

They exemplify their approach using three different cases. A specific search can be performed within a large class of compounds or a more specified and smaller compound class; in this case the authors chose rare earth compounds and rare earth cuprates, respectively. In their third example using quasicrystals, the authors show that a specific search can also be limited based on a chemical property rather than the chemical composition.

• Stimulation of Ideas through Compound-Based Bibliometrics: Counting and Mapping Chemical Compounds for Analyzing Research Topics in Chemistry, Physics, and Materials Science,
  Andreas Barth, Werner Marx,
  ChemistryOpen 2013, 1(6), 276–283.
  DOI: 10.1002/open.201200029

ChemistryOpen – the first society-owned, open-access, chemistry journal – is a journal of ChemPubSoc Europe published by Wiley-VCH.