Mapping the intellectual structure of the Internet of Things (IoT) field (2000–2014): a co-word analysis

The study utilized co-word analysis to explore papers in the field of Internet of Things to examine the scientific development in the area. The research data were retrieved from the WOS database from the period between 2000 and 2014, which consists of 758 papers. By using co-word analysis, this study found 7 clusters that represent the intellectual structure of IoT, including ‘IoT and Security’, ‘Middleware’, ‘RFID’, ‘Internet’, ‘Cloud computing’, ‘Wireless sensor networks’ and ‘6LoWPAN’. To understand these intellectual structures, this study used a co-occurrence matrix based on Pearson’s correlation coefficient to create a clustering of the words using the hierarchical clustering technique. To visualize these intellectual structures, this study carried out a multidimensional scaling analysis, to which a PROXCAL algorithm was applied.