A Co-Word Study of Artificial Intelligence

This Note briefly describes the method of `co-word analysis', and presents some results of its application to the scientific literature in the field of Artificial Intelligence (AI). A sample of AI literature, published in 1984 and 1985, was drawn from the CNRS/INIST database in Paris. The co-word analysis of this sample suggests that AI is a field characterized by relative intellectual coherence in a specifiable `core'. In this, AI seems to differ from scientific studies of the acidification of the environment: a co-word analysis of the latter field reveals no evidence of the likely emergence of a unifying general theory. The policy implications of such co-word studies are discussed.