Comparative study on research fronts using different citation types

How to accurately,scientifically and rapidly keep abreast the research fronts in a certain field is the hot point of both researchers and policymakers.Citation analysis,usually co-citation analysis,is a simple method used in study of research fronts.In order to more accurately,scientifically and rapidly find out the research fronts in a certain field,the results obtained by direct citation,co-citation and bibliographic coupling analyses were compared,showing that the efficiency of direction citation analysis is the best while that of co-citation analysis is the worst.The cluster coefficient of direct citation analysis was bigger than that of bibliographic coupling analysis,suggesting that the similarity is rather high in the contents of literature and the novel research fields would not be missed.