A historiographic analysis of fuel cell research in Asia – China racing ahead

Abstract

Fuel cell research in China, India, Japan, Singapore, South Korea and Taiwan, over the years 1983-2007 is analysed and compared with that in USA for number of papers, document type, journals used and international collaboration. For India and China we have also identified the key researchers and institutions. Using HistCite, the visualization technique developed by Garfield and colleagues, we have constructed the historiographs for India and China based on both local citation scores (LCS) and global citation scores (GCS), and identified key papers. We find that the knowledge flow among different Asian countries is rather limited and that China has something to offer to India. The thrust in China is in developing noble metal nanoparticle catalysts supported on carbon nanotubes and the thrust in India is in the area of direct methanol fuel cells. In India A K Shukla is the single most significant contributor to fuel cell research: He is an author of 14 of the 50 nodes in the India LCS historiograph.