Introducing the Research Horizon Navigator: A New Tool for Emerging Research

Launched in June 2024, the Research Horizon Navigator is the latest module in Clarivate’s Incites Benchmarking & Analytics platform. This powerful tool is designed to empower researchers by highlighting emerging research trends with significant potential for breakthroughs. Leveraging trusted data from the Web of Science Core Collection, the Research Horizon Navigator employs advanced AI techniques to identify new research topics based on articles, reviews, and conference proceedings published in the past 5 years¹. This post will guide you through the basic features on this invaluable resource.

Strategies for Finding New Research Topics

Finding a new research topic can be particularly challenging, especially for early-career researchers. Here are some general strategies:

• Read to Equip Yourself – read 2-3 academic papers each week. Start with quick scans to identify interesting points and research gaps, then dive deeper into papers that catch your interest.
• Participate in Related Seminars – attend seminars beyond your department to gain insight and innovative ideas. Engage with presenters to discuss their projects and identify potential improvements.
• Develop Topics from Social Phenomena – investigate current societal issues, such as those related to the UN Sustainable Development Goals (e.g. SDGs). Addressing real-world challenges can lead to impactful research projects.

Despite these strategies, the vast amount of existing literature can still make it difficult for researchers to effectively identify and pursue new topics. However, the advent of AI tools like the Research Horizon Navigator can allow researchers to easily enhance their productivity in exploring emerging trends and research topics.

Understanding Emerging Topics

In the Research Horizon Navigator, an emerging topic is defined by two key components²:

• A collection of closely related papers that are highly cited and published with the last 5 years, showcasing the most relevant and impact research in the field.
• Recently published papers that cite these core papers.

In addition, to qualify as an emerging topic, the following criteria must be met:

• There must be a minimum of 3 and a maximum of 25 core papers.
• The average publication year of core papers must not exceed 5 years, and
• The average publication year for co-citing papers must not exceed 2.5 years.

Exploring Topics in Research Horizon Navigator

To access Research Horizon Navigator, go to Web of Science, and select it from the Products pull-down menu in the upper right corner. Registration for a Clarivate account is required.

There are 2 ways to explore emerging topics in Research Horizon Navigator: by keywords or by categories (e.g. Engineering).

Now, select “Engineering” from the Categories in the top menu. Click on “Number of Categories” to view all sub-categories (e.g. “Engineering, Aerospace”), which currently features 23 emerging topics. Clicking on a sub-category will display the complete list of emerging topics. To dive deeper into a specific topic, click on its title (e.g. “Sustainable Aviation: Decarbonization, Hybrid Propulsion, and Emissions Reduction”).

The Research Horizon Navigator provides two distinct views: Explorer and Details. The Explorer view features a network citation map, visually representing all core and co-citing papers that related to that emerging topic. Core papers are those ranked in the top 1% by citations received in the same field, publication year, and document type published within the past 5 years.

The Details view offers a table with additional analyses of the contributing papers, allowing you to identify key contributions from organizations, authors and funding agencies, as well as the top papers within that topic. The Research Horizon Navigator also includes a new metric called Interdisciplinarity Index, which measures how broadly an emerging research topic integrates ideas from various fields. This index scores from 0 (indicating no interdisciplinarity) to 1 (indicating maximum interdisciplinarity).

Conclusion

Identifying new research topics can be a daunting task, particularly for researchers navigating a vast and evolving research landscape. The Research Horizon Navigator provides another way to highlight emerging trends and facilitate exploration of innovative ideas. There are more features to explore in this robust tool. We encourage you to try it out, and if you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact our Research Support team.

– By Kevin Ho, Library

References and Additional Resources

1. What is Research Horizon Navigator?
2. InCites Help Center – Definitions
3. Introduction to Research Horizon Navigator (Video)

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