Analyzing Citations to Software by Research Area: A Case Study of MATLAB

ABSTRACT

Citation analysis can uncover ways to apply the use of software in different research synergies. A cited reference search on MATLAB in the Web of Science database retrieved 6,873 citing articles from 2000 to 2020. These articles were analyzed by research areas to reveal the use of MATLAB in unexpected subject-specific disciplines. The VOSviewer software tool was used to generate and analyze keyword co-occurrence clusters by research area. The study found that MATLAB not only holds applications in the Technology and the Physical Sciences disciplines but also extends to the Life Sciences & Biomedicine, Social Sciences, and Arts & Humanities.

KEYWORDS:

• Citation analysis
• MATLAB
• research areas
• software citation
• VOSviewer

Acknowledgments

I am grateful to the reviewers for their helpful suggestions, owing to which the manuscript was greatly improved.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Correction Statement

This article has been corrected with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.