A bibliometric perspective on the academic contributions of Loet Leydesdorff

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to commemorate the late scholar Loet Leydesdorff for his great academic contribution on the basis of data from Web of Science. In the span of more than 40 years, he had 526 publications, with the years 2004-2021 being the most productive (394 publications). His international collaborations spread widely across 36 countries, with Germany, the USA, the UK, China, Russia, and South Korea being the most significant. His most frequent collaboration partners included Lutz Bornmann (Germany), Staša Milojević (USA), Caroline Wagner (USA), Henry Etzkowitz (USA), Jonathan Adams (UK), Ronald Rousseau (Belgium), and Ping Zhou (China). With a broad and deep knowledge background, Leydesdorff’s research extended across multiple disciplines and fields, but he was most active in library and information science and computer science. He made profound contributions to the study of bibliometrics, innovation systems (the Triple Helix model), and communications. Leydesdorff had a remarkable and extensive citation impact, with citations in 221 WoS subject categories from 120 countries. His publications in 1996, 1998, 2000, 2005, 2006, and 2012 are highly cited, and those on university-industry-government relations (the Triple Helix model) are the most cited.