The structure and dynamics of the research fronts in HIV/AIDS research: part-whole and adaptive specialization.

In this paper, we have identified and analyzed the emergence, structure and dynamics of the paradigmatic research fronts that established the fundamentals of the biomedical knowledge on HIV/AIDS. A search of papers with the identifiers HIV/AIDS, Human Immunodeficiency Virus and Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome in the Web of Science (Thomson Reuters), was carried out. A citation network of those papers was constructed. Then, a sub-network of the papers with the highest number of inter-citations (with a minimal in-degree of 30) was selected to perform a combination of network clustering and text mining to identify the paradigmatic research fronts and analyze their dynamics. Seven research fronts were identified in this sub-network. Each one of the fronts are related to one of the following topics: preliminary pathology research, virus entry, virus tropism, drug resistance, genetic expression, assembly, and virus replication. The emergence of these fronts occurred in successive waves over the time which suggest a transition in the paradigmatic focus. The emergence of the biomedical fronts in HIV/AIDS research is explained not just by the partition of the problem in elements and interactions leading to increasingly specialized communities, but also by changes in the technological context of this health problem.