As climate change challenges intensify, circular economy strategies like industrial symbiosis (IS)-where waste outputs become valuable inputs for other processes-offer critical pathways toward sustainable industrial development. Despite conceptual appeal, widespread IS implementation remains limited due to persistent barriers spanning technical, economic, regulatory, social, and informational dimensions. This study examines how technological innovations have responded through systematic patent activity analysis. Drawing on 6422 IS-related patents (1993-2025), mixed-methods combining SciBERT-based semantic analysis and clustering techniques map technological responses against established IS implementation barriers. Findings reveal overwhelming concentration on technical barriers (88.9 %), with minimal attention to informational (7.5 %), economic (2.4 %), social/organizational (0.9 %), and regulatory challenges (0.4 %)-indicating significant misalignment between patented innovation priorities and implementation needs. Temporal analysis shows accelerating patent activity (20.6 % CAGR), while jurisdictional analysis highlights China-US bipolar leadership. Technology classification reveals chemical/materials dominance (49.7 %) with biological/pharmaceutical applications representing only 3.5 %. Notably, patents addressing non-technical barriers exhibit higher citation rates (2-3 x higher) and broader family coverage, suggesting greater influence despite limited presence. While acknowledging patent analysis captures only technological dimensions and inherently favors technical solutions, this study reveals important patterns in formal R&D responses and identifies critical gaps contributing to persistent implementation challenges.

Patent-based scientometrics has developed rich longitudinal indicators for characterizing technology innovation dynamics, yet translating continuous indicator vectors into discrete, interpretable regime categories — the vocabulary of technology foresight — remains methodologically underdeveloped. Existing rule-based classifiers generate high rates of unclassifiable observations and systematically neglect the qualitative semantic content embedded in patent text. This paper introduces a three-layer hybrid framework that integrates quantitative patentometric indicators, a purpose-built ontological classification scheme, and large language model (LLM) semantic calibration to address this gap. Rather than deploying LLMs as standalone classifiers, the framework formalizes their role as structured calibration agents within indicator-based scientometric workflows. The framework is evaluated on 41,475 green hydrogen patents across three Cooperative Patent Classification subdomains (C25B, H01M, Y02E) spanning 2005–2024. The first layer computes seven patentometric indicators across 54 rolling three-year windows; the second layer maps indicator profiles to the Minimal Foresight Ontology (MFO v1.0), an eight-regime categorical scheme with percentile-anchored threshold conditions; and the third layer employs Qwen2.5-3B-Instruct to adjudicate structurally ambiguous observations under a conservative dual-condition asymmetric overwrite rule. Calibrated regime sequences are then subjected to first-order Markov chain analysis and predictive validity testing. LLM calibration resolves the 38.9% of observations left unclassified by the rule-based layer and increases regime label diversity by ΔH = + 0.298 bits. Divergence cluster analysis reveals that epistemic misalignment between text-based and indicator-based signals concentrates in periods of rapid structural change. Markov analysis identifies Emerging Trajectory as the dominant long-run attractor (π = 0.433), Volatile Expansion as the most self-persistent regime (E[T] = 2.50 windows), and current regime labels as significant predictors of next-window Shannon entropy, semantic drift, and patent volume. The proposed framework contributes a replicable pipeline for LLM-augmented patent foresight and establishes the first empirical Markov characterization of innovation regime transition dynamics in a calibrated patent corpus.

The expansion of universal health coverage in Türkiye has intensified pressure on public healthcare providers through high outpatient volumes that strain capacity and financial sustainability. Remote healthcare delivery has emerged as a potential strategy to improve efficiency and access. However, limited evidence exists on how remote outpatient care should be implemented across medical specialties within a universal payer system, or how alternative implementation strategies perform financially. This study evaluates the specialty-specific feasibility and financial impact of remote outpatient care using comprehensive administrative data from a large public training and research hospital in Izmir, supplemented by qualitative input from clinical specialists. The analysis includes 577,984 outpatient visits recorded in 2022 across major medical specialties. Eligibility for remote delivery is identified using observable clinical proxies-imaging requests, laboratory tests, and prescription issuance-to capture visits not requiring physical examination or procedural intervention. Results show that 121,248 visits (21.0%) are suitable for remote delivery, accounting for 16.2% of expenditures ($0.68 million out of $4.20 million). Remote eligibility varies substantially across specialties, with high suitability in dermatology and infectious diseases but limited applicability in device-dependent fields such as pulmonology. Four implementation scenarios are simulated over a 10-year horizon: Regulatory Compliance, Evidence-Based Specialty-Specific, Follow-Up Only, and Hybrid Progressive. The Regulatory Compliance scenario yields the shortest break-even period (3 years) and highest ROI (1185%). The Hybrid Progressive scenario, incorporating phased specialty expansion and AI-supported triage, requires higher upfront costs but generates the largest cumulative net savings ($1.39 million). The findings demonstrate that financially sustainable remote outpatient care can be achieved through carefully designed, specialty-specific implementation strategies.

This study presents a comprehensive comparative analysis of smart contract applications in healthcare across scholarly publications and patents, addressing the growing importance of blockchain technology in healthcare systems. Through a multi-stage computational analysis pipeline, we examined 4156 scholarly publications and 10,204 patents to identify knowledge transfer patterns, keyword evolution, and innovation dynamics. Our findings challenge traditional models of knowledge diffusion by revealing a bidirectional flow of innovation between academic and commercial domains, with technical keywords often appearing in patents years before scholarly exploration (mean lag of − 8.12 years). The analysis demonstrates distinct but complementary conceptual emphases: patents focus primarily on technical implementation mechanisms while publications emphasize governance frameworks, interoperability standards, and ethical considerations. Geographic analysis revealed striking asymmetries, with European institutions dominating scholarly output while the United States holds overwhelming dominance in patent activity. Using advanced semantic analysis through SciBERT embeddings, we identified two distinct clusters within scholarly publications, with application-oriented research representing the largest thematic focus (79.4

This study investigates the future opportunities and development trajectories of robotics technology through comprehensive analysis of research trends and technological developments. By examining over 268.000 scientific publications and 343.000 patents in the robotics domain, the research provides insights into emerging technological patterns and their potential societal implications. Moreover, this study provides a methodological framework for future-oriented technology analysis (FTA) that extends beyond robotics to other technological domains. The analysis, supported by advanced text mining techniques including Topic Modeling and semantic analysis, identified 91 distinct research topics and 98 patent topics, revealing significant trends in robotics development across various sectors including manufacturing, healthcare, service robotics, and human–robot interaction. The findings highlight the increasing convergence of artificial intelligence with robotics, the growing importance of collaborative robots, and the emergence of novel applications in healthcare and social assistance. The study demonstrates how robotics technology is evolving beyond traditional industrial applications into more sophisticated and socially integrated systems. By analyzing these patterns within the framework of FTA, this research offers valuable data-driven insights for policymakers, industries, and researchers in understanding and preparing for future developments in robotics technology. The findings contribute to both theoretical understanding of robotics evolution and practical applications, providing strategic insights for stakeholders navigating the future landscape of robotics technology.

Over the past decades, medical waste management (MWM) has evolved into a paramount global challenge, intertwining environmental sustainability and public health dimensions. This manuscript traces the paradigm shift from the foundational Basel Convention of 1989 to the significant sway of World Health Organization publications on contemporary debates. Utilizing a mixed approach strategy that blended qualitative and quantitative techniques, the research employed extensive literature review, co-citation and co-word analysis methodologies to ascertain the direction of contemporary trends in MWM. Within the scope of the research findings, current strategies reveal noticeable gaps, especially those that lack sound policy structures, comprehensive insights and effective operational frameworks. Co-citation evaluations spotlight predominant themes in academic references. Foremost among them are the socioeconomic factor, environmental significance, medical waste (MW) stabilization and sustainable society, sequenced by cluster magnitude. Co-word analysis unveils that, despite the long-standing presence of incineration plants, pyrolysis has, since 2016, prioritized environmental considerations. The recycling ethos peaked in 2014, but the sustainability paradigm burgeoned in 2020, with the 'circular economy' gaining momentum in 2021. Emerging trend analysis underscores the mounting significance of circular waste technologies and sustainability as indispensable solutions. Results demonstrate MW advancements and highlight emerging trends shaping the future of the field. The research concludes by accentuating the necessity of global collaborative efforts, integrating cutting-edge technologies and infusing sustainability and circularity tenets into societal frameworks to navigate MWM's intricate landscape. Future research trajectories, including wastewater governance, novel mobile waste disposal strategies and a cyclic waste classification paradigm, are proposed.

In a knowledge economy era, universities have been significant in their knowledge generation role. To provide this role, universities transform themselves by improving their research infrastructure, creating an entrepreneurial ecosystem, and educating students with an applied perspective. There are many review studies on entrepreneurial universities in literature but they are lacking in proposing a transition pathway for higher education institutions in different national development contexts. Therefore, in this study, we aim to explore the cognitive background of entrepreneurial university (EPU) concepts and, based on our findings, propose a transition pathway for higher education institutions by considering different national development contexts. Document citation analysis is applied for understanding the cognitive background of the concept and literature review, and the findings of document citation analysis shed light on while proposing a transition pathway.

PurposeThe authors posit that one of the key enablers of the circular economy will be the digital transformation – in other words, “digitalization.” In this study, the authors examine and visualize the interaction of the circular economy and digitalization by using scientific publications. They explore possible synergies and future research avenues at this junction.Design/methodology/approachThe authors first apply bibliometrics to explore and visualize the relationships between the circular economy and digitalization in the academic literature. Following the clustering of topics, they define key emerging factors for each cluster. Based on this analysis, they suggest future research avenues.FindingsThe authors find that there are four main clusters at the junction of circular economy and digitalization, including (1) sharing economy, (2) additive manufacturing, (3) business models and (4) industrial ecology and remanufacturing. They then dig deeper into these topics to better understand what factors would shape the future of the clusters. They conclude that sharing economy perspective and additive manufacturing may be enhanced by regulation-based and behavioral change-based approaches. Circular business models should be developed to maintain circularity in industry. Finally, digital manufacturing should be implemented within the framework of industrial ecology and remanufacturing principles to increase efficiency, productivity and traceability in the circular economy.Originality/valueDigitalization offers significant potentials toward breakthrough sustainability by creating a circular economy. Hence, understanding the relationship between circular economy and digitalization is important to achieve sustainable development goals.

Günümüzde iletişim teknolojisi alanında gelinen son teknolojik yeniliği ifade eden 5G teknolojisinin sağlık alanında kullanımı ile bağlantılı yeni bir sağlık sisteminin ortaya çıkışına öncülük etmesi beklenmektedir. Ayrıca 5G teknolojisinin hasta ve sağlık hizmeti sunucularının ihtiyaçlarını doğru, verimli, uygun maliyetli ve önemli ölçüde karşılayabilen yeni bir bağlantılı sağlık ekosisteminim iletişim altyapısını oluşturacağı düşünülmektedir. Amaç: Bu çalışmada, 5G teknolojisinin sağlığın hangi alanlarında kullanılabileceğine yönelik bilginin patent belgelerinin incelenmesi yolu ile ortaya çıkarılması amaçlanmıştır. Yöntem: Çalışmada sistematik literatür taraması, sistematik patent taraması şeklinde uyarlanarak sağlığın izlem, teşhis ve tedavi fonksiyonları üzerinden incelemeler gerçekleştirilmiştir. Taramalar yöntem kısmında verilen protokol ve algoritma üzerinden yapılmıştır. Taramalar sonrası 55 patent araştırmaya dâhil edilmiştir. Çalışmada incelenen patentler ile ortaya çıkan sonuçlar, sağlık fonksiyonlarının geleneksel hastane odaklı yaklaşımının dönüşerek bağlantılı ve uzak mesafelerden hizmetin yapılabildiği bir sağlık sistemine dönüşümün yaşanacağına dair önemli işaretler sunmaktadır. İncelenen patentlerde sağlık fonksiyonları açısından en yoğun teknolojik gelişimin uzak izlem alanında olacağı görülmüştür. Uzak izlem alanında ortaya çıkan teknolojik gelişmenin önemli kısmı kronik hastalıklar ile ilgili olarak alınan patentlerdir.

Purpose The COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted the supply chains, and this brought researchers and practitioners to think about more on circular supply chains (CSC). The CSC concept has been discussed in the literature more than a decade. This study aims to find out the theoretical roots of CSC by analyzing scholarly articles in literature. Design/methodology/approach This paper uses document cocitation analysis for reaching this aim. After retrieving data from Web of Science database, this paper explores data set by considering used references of these publications and clusters them based on their title terms and visualizes them by using cosine similarity index. Findings This paper concludes that CSC is mainly discussed along with sustainability, sustainable supply chains and green supply chains, where the focus is integrating circular economy principles to supply chain management (SCM). On the other hand, although resiliency is an essential characteristic of SCM, contribution of CSC to supply chain resilience is neglected in the literature. Research limitations/implications CSC will gain importance in near future to increase national/firm productivity, and findings of this paper will give researchers insights for furthering their studies. Social implications To avoid supply chain and market collapse caused by natural disruptions, supply chain resilience is of paramount importance. According to the findings of this paper, the authors believe that business resilience in COVID-19-restricted environment may have exit point by using circular perspective. Originality/value The importance of CSC has increased due to the disruptions caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. Therefore, this unique study was undertaken to investigate the evolution of this crucial topic with evidence from the literature through a cocitation analysis.

Recently, one of the inventive developments penetrating many industries is blockchain technology. In the era of globalization and digitalization, blockchain has garnered interest in various application fields from health data management to clinical trials. In this study, we aimed to explore blockchain applications in healthcare with an explorative perspective with a scientometrics analysis. With this analysis, the trends and evolutionary relations between health and blockchain technology were examined via the queries in the Web of Science database. In the analysis, the author keyword co-occurrences were used for demonstrating concept relationships. To understand the new emerging study field, VosViewer was used for network visualizations and CiteSpace free java-based software was used for scientometrics analysis. As a result, it can be implied that the main focus areas of the studies on blockchain are solving payment systems, digital identity, and privacy and security issues in healthcare field.

Accelerating change in society, technology and economy with increasing number of emerging challenges force strategic managers to think more on scanning and intelligence tools for giving timely responses to remain competitive. Therefore, many different intelligence phrases have been introduced and become popular during the last decade. In this study we aim to systematize intelligence phrases in published scholarly studies and distinguish them. Our focus will be on the ‘technology intelligence - (TI)’ concept as a frequently used type of intelligence for companies, governments and research institutions. TI has attracted significant attention due to the increase in technological change on a global scale, the rise of R&D activities to provide efficiency in competitive conditions, the increasing use of external technology resources, and the growing complexity of technology development. In this study, we first applied a qualitative approach for conceptual clarification; followed by a quantitative approach, namely structural topic modeling, for positioning the terms in the literature. Our study found out that the term ‘intelligence’ has been used with two perspectives, which we called as ‘endogenous’ and ‘exogenous’. Clustering intelligence phrases based on these perspectives, the results of our study showed that technology intelligence is a part of the exogenous intelligence cluster. Then, the quantitative analysis proved that different from other intelligence approaches, technology intelligence has more association with emergence terms and related to technological change among the others.

This study examines the recent evolution of Foresight as a well-recognized tool for long-term policy and strategy making and discusses the future directions the activity might take. The science mapping approach is used for the analysis. Drawing on big data, science mapping provides an evolutionary overview of scientific domains across time and helps to identify patterns showing the research agenda and directions of development of those domains. In the present study, we demonstrate the use of the science mapping approach with the case of the Foresight field. The results of our analysis confirm earlier academic studies on the evolution of Foresight; hence show the validity of the science mapping approach. Besides demonstrating the evolution of the field with the scientific publications in the last couple of decades, the study seeks scientific evidence for the next generations of Foresight to emerge towards the 2030s.

The COVID-19 pandemic has been one of the most significant crises of the twenty-first century. The pandemic has affected world societies in all spheres of life. Disruptions have been evident in mobility, education, finance, commerce, work practices, governance systems, production, and global value chains, among all the other spheres of life. Therefore, it is essential to analyze what sorts of new social, technological, and economic practices will emerge during and after the pandemic. Developing sustainable responses to emerging challenges requires the identification of the trends and disruptions caused by the pandemic and the development of longer-term perspectives and immediate actions. There is also a need to establish new organizational models and governance structures. The present book addresses the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic in three main parts by considering (i) economy, markets, and finance; (ii) science, technology, and innovation; and finally, (iii) social and policy. The contributing authors present a comprehensive discussion on the impact, implications, and challenges of COVID-19 from these three perspectives.

The successful implementation of the new European Green Deal in aviation depends on the European aeronautics industry’s ability to develop new technologies able to face the climate changes. The decarbonization in the aviation is very difficult, compared to other transport sector, and one possibility to reduce emissions is by increasing the usage of low-carbon alternative fuels. Among the analyses carried out within the Horizon 2020 project PARE – Perspectives for Aeronautical Research in Europe, one relevant aspect concerns the possible strategies already applied or under study to reach the zero-emission target using alternative fuels.

How to evaluate or measure the emergence degree or level for a specific technology is rarely discussed in the prior studies, and it should be a valuable issue for the relevant areas on technology forecasting, foresight, and technological strategies for macro and micro economies, particularly for those emerging economies who are chasing the technology advances in the developed countries. A conceptual framework inspired by swarm intelligence theory is introduced to measure the emergence degree or level for a specific technology. Swarm intelligence belongs to complex systems theory, and has evolved into a helpful tool for heuristic algorithms and optimization computation, and brought forward an insightful perspective on the evolution and emergence of natural or social systems in the past decades. To verify the proposed framework for measuring emergence degree of a specific technology based on the basic philosophy of swarm intelligence, a case study analyzes an annual set of emerging technologies of the World Economic Forum. The theoretical and empirical analyses could present a fresh vision to investigate the essence of technology emergence, and provide some supplemental thoughts for the policy-making on those emerging or new technologies.

Purpose The purpose of this study is to discuss the possibility of setting up a platform for inclusive policymaking process drawing upon the blockchain concept. The study posits that blockchain also has great potentials in non-financial applications, such as in policymaking, where there is a need for bottom-up approaches with more decentralized, distributed and evidence-based processes. Design/methodology/approach The study makes use of an analogy-based creative design methodology. The design science paradigm has its roots in engineering and the sciences of the artificial (Simon, 1996). As a problem-solving paradigm for solving complex engineering issues, design science seeks to create innovations that define the ideas, practices, technical capabilities and products through which the analysis, design, implementation and use of information systems can be effectively and efficiently accomplished. In the present study, the policy development theories and the logic of blockchain are synthesized to prepare a task model for the "IdeaChain" concept as a platform for creating, sharing and validating novel ideas as well as converting them into policies or new ventures through the funding mechanisms. Findings The IdeaChain concept is designed and demonstrated through its use in the domain of science, technology and innovation (STI) policy, which can be extended to cover all innovative activities linking the whole process from their emergence, funding, development, implementation and impact upon policy. Originality/value Blockchain is mostly discussed in literature with its impact on financial sector. IdeaChain is the first attempt to explore the potentials of blockchain in STI policymaking.