What are Topic Clusters?

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Topic Clusters are formed by aggregating Topics with similar research interest together to form a broader, higher-level area of research. These Topic Clusters can be used to get a broader understanding of the research being done by a country, institution (or group) or researcher (or group), before drilling into the more niche underlying Topics.

Each of the 94,000 Topics have been matched with one of the 1,500 Topic Clusters. As with Topics, a researcher or institution can contribute to multiple Topic Clusters, but a Topic can only belong to one Topic Cluster and a publication can only belong to one Topic (and therefore one Topic Cluster).

Topic Clusters are formed using the same direct citation algorithm that creates the Topics. When the strength of the citation links between Topics reaches a threshold, a Topic Cluster is formed.