A Research On S&T Tracking Based On Co-occurrence Analysis

The rapid progress of global technology has provided enterprises with more technological opportunities than ever before. It has become a focus of S&T management to analyze and evaluate the status and trends of S&T evolution, choose priority area of development, and make proper distribution of resources. As limitations exit in quantitative analysis both in data and methodology, especially when considering the specific condition in China, traditional methods of S&T management could no longer meet nowadays requirements. New technological tools which draw experience from traditional methods need to be explored to support S&T management.Based on field research and literature review, the paper defines the concept of S&T tracking, analyzes the logic to S&T and its related concepts, explains its structure and process, and builds up a relatively scientific system of S&T tracking from different perspectives. The paper carries out the following research:First, a two-stage & three-dimension model of S&T tracking is established.As no clear definition has been presented as to the content of S&T tracking, the idea of technology tracking is also inexplicit. Existing literature focuses mainly on an industry, a certain technology field, or an individual enterprise. There is a lack of systematic study on S&T groups which bear similar characteristics. The paper sets up a two-stage & three-dimension model of technology tracking, which includes macro-analysis and micro-analysis. On macro-level, technology tracking mainly refers to the overall analysis on S&T body, technology structure and its market. On micro-level, advantage, dependency and cooperation in technology have been discussed.Second, to overcome shortcomings in traditional S&T tracking method, especially inefficiency in data analysis, the paper brings forward a new S&T tracking process, and makes improvements in data analysis.In the paper technology tracking is divided into three interrelated parts: data preprocessing, data analysis and data visualization. Identifying four major mistakes in data preprocessing, i.e., spelling errors, renamed data, repeated downloads and reference mistakes, the article puts forward a new data analysis model based on co-occurrence analysis, which overcomes the deficiencies of traditional co-occurrence analysis and absorbs advantages of co-citation and co-word model.Finally, through data visualization, empirical study on highway engineering is carried out from perspective of fundamental research and technology innovation.The path of S&T innovation shows fundamental research and technology innovation are the origin of S&T progress. Thus, S&T tracking on fundamental research and technology innovation is an effective way in reflecting trend of S&T development in a specific field. As systematic and comprehensive research has only been rarely made, from perspective of fundamental research and technology innovation, the paper establishes a model and its analytical framework, makes empirical analysis on specific S&T activities, which hopefully is conducive to S&T tracking practice.