Database tomography for technical intelligence: Analysis of the research impact assessment literature

Database tomography is a technique for identifying pervasive themes in large text databases and revealing the connectivity among these themes by using a computer-based algorithm to extract and order data. This allows users to create a taxonomy of pervasive research “thrusts” and interrelationships from the extracted data. The author examines how database tomography can be used to derive technical intelligence for professional literature in a given technical field. For this study, the field of Research Impact Assessment was selected. A database of relevant RIA articles was generated and the database “mapped” to reveal the relationships among the main “thrust” 3T63S. © 1997 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.