and electrical conducting polymer nanocomposite [47]. In the present research, the study of

scientific trajectories used bibliometric and network analyses. In contrast, the study of

technological trajectories used patent application analysis, including indicators such as main

technological classes, principal applicants, and jurisdictions, and a network-based study (co-

occurrence analysis).

7.3 Methodology

The research process to identify the scientific and technological trajectory was carried

out in two phases. The first phase used the Scopus database [48] to obtain bibliographic

data to conduct the bibliometric and network analyses. The terms bioelectronics

and bioelectronic were entered into the search field (article title, abstract, keywords)

under the following criteria: ((TITLE-ABS-KEY(bioelectronics) OR TITLE-ABS-KEY

(bioelectronic))). A total of 4,384 documents published between 1963 and 2022 were

obtained from the query. The documents were analyzed to show the top ten positions

on the following indicators: 1. Country or territory; 2. Affiliation; 3. Subject area; and 4.

Source. Subsequently, the bibliographic information of the 2,000 most-cited documents

was downloaded and, based on these data, we carried out the co-occurrence analysis

using authors’ keywords and the full counting method. This analysis produced

4,045 keywords, which were filtered by an occurrence for each word (equal to or greater

than five), for a total of 196 terms that met this condition; 195 presented some type of

connection. This information was used to create a normalized network map using the

fractionalization method, which included 195 nodes distributed in 12 clusters, with

1,476 links and a total link strength of 2,403.

The second phase of the methodological development used the Lens [49] database,

which includes different patent document databases (World Intellectual Property

Organization-WIPO; the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office-USPTO; European Patent

Office-EPO; and IP Australia). As in the previous case, the terms bioelectronics and bioe­

lectronic were entered for query, but in this case, in the “title, abstract, or claims” field,

using the following search criteria: (title:(bioelectronics) OR abstract:(bioelectronics) OR

claim:(bioelectronics)) AND (title:(bioelectronic) OR abstract:(bioelectronic) OR claim:

(bioelectronic)). The patent applications filter was added to analyze the trends of tech­

nologies that applicants want to protect. A total of 349 records were obtained for the

period from 1988 to 2022, which were grouped into 192 simple families and 177 extended

families. With this information, we highlighted the top ten positions for the following

indicators: (i) jurisdiction, (ii) applicants, and (iii) technological sectors, according to

International Patent Classification (IPC) guidelines. Subsequently, we downloaded data

from the 349 patent documents. With these data, we created a network map with the

following characteristics: (i) The terms to be analyzed were obtained from the title and

abstract; (ii) the counting method was full counting, with which 2,915 terms were ob­

tained; (iii) of these, 466 presented an occurrence equal to or greater than five, and these

were evaluated to determine their relevance (only 60% were selected); (iv) from these,

280 items were obtained, although the largest set of related terms was 261; and (v) with

this information, it was possible to create a normalized network map through the frac­

tionalization method with 261 nodes grouped into 14 clusters, with 2,404 links and a total

link strength of 28,448.

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Bioelectronics