Engineering 4 (2018)2095-8099/ 2018 THE AUTHORS. Published by Elsevier LTD on behalf of Chinese Academy of Engineering and Higher Education PressLimited Company. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (creativecommons/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).Views & CommentsEngineering Fronts in 2018Fang Cai a, Jiu-Ming Ji b, Zhi-Qiang Jiang c, Zhi-Rui Mu d, Xiang Wu d, Wen-Jiang Zheng d, Wei-Xing Zhou c,Shan-Tung Tu e, Xuhong Qian f,ga College of Distance Education, East China University of Science and Technology, Shanghai 200237, Chinab Institute of Science and Technology Information, East China University of Science and Technology, Shanghai 200237, Chinac Research Center for Econophysics & School of Business, East China University of Science and Technology, Shanghai 200237, Chinad Centre for Strategic Studies, Chinese Academy of Engineering, Beijing 100088, Chinae Key Laboratory of Pressurized System and Safety, Ministry of Education & School of Mechanical and Power Engineering, East ChinaUniversity of Science and Technology, Shanghai 200237, China fEast China Normal University, Shanghai 200062, China gShanghai Key Laboratory of Chemical Biology, East China University of Science and Technology, Shanghai 200237, ChinaE-mail addresses: jjm@ecust (J.-M. Ji); zwj@cae (W.-J. Zheng)1. IntroductionEngineering science and technology is an important driving force in changing the world, and engineering frontiers (herereferred to as “engineering fronts”) are important guidelines for future directions in the development of engineering scienceand technology. Grasping trends in global engineering science and technology and quickly adapting to new directions in thecurrent scientific and technological revolution have become strategic choices for countries all over the world. Since 2017, theChinese Academy of Engineering has organized the Engineering Fronts research project, together with Clarivate Analyticsand Higher Education Press, with the hope of bringing together the expert knowledge of global engineering and technologytalents, assessing global frontiers in engineering research and development, and developing strategic opportunities to providea reference for active responses to global challenges and sustainable development.The studies in Engineering Fronts combine quantitative and qualitative analyses. On the quantitative side, published journalpapers (e.g., from Science Citation Index Expanded), conference papers, and global patents are taken into consideration inorder to identify possible fronts. On the qualitative side, experts are involved in the whole study process, as they proposecandidate engineering fronts based on their perspectives and experience, research results from data mining, and interpret keyresults.Each year, the study issues about 90 identified engineering research fronts and 90 engineering development fronts. Amongthese, 27 key engineering research fronts and 27 key engineering development fronts are selected for detailed interpretations.Here, we summarize the development of the 2018 edition.2. MethodologyThe term “fronts” in Engineering Fronts research refers to major forward-looking, leading, and exploratory directions inengineering that have a major influence on and leading role in the future development of engineering technology. These frontsform an important guide for cultivating innovation in engineering disciplines.Engineering Fronts research incorporates the advantages of both literature data analysis and expert knowledge by adoptinga combination of data analysis and multiple rounds of expert advice and interpretation. The research process is divided intothree stages: data mapping, data analysis, and expert review. The research itself is organized through in-depth cooperationbetween bibliometric experts and field experts, and the research scope covers 53 subject groups in nine fields of engineeringtechnology. Fig. 1 illustrates the specific implementation process of Engineering Fronts research, where green refers to dataanalysis content and purple refers to expert participation. F. Cai et al. / Engineering 4 (2018)2 Fig. 1. Implementation flow chart for the Engineering Fronts research. The part in green is based on data analysis and the part in purple is carriedout by experts from nine fields.During the data mapping stage, we define the scope of the data mining through interaction between field experts andbibliometric experts. Most of the basic data on engineering fronts comes from global high-level journals, importantconferences, and Derwent Innovation patent classification numbers in nine fields; further supplementary data is obtainedfrom key journals, papers, or keywords that are provided by experts.The data analysis uses clustering methods to identify research hotspots and patent maps. When mining hotspots, clusteredtopics are obtained by co-citation clustering of the top 10% Science Citation Index (SCI) journal papers and conference papersin the Core Collection of the Web of Science in the previous five years (2012–2017 in this case). Next, 50 candidateengineering research hotspots are selected from the topics in each field, based on the citation count, average publication year,and proportion of frequently cited papers. To reflect the emerging nature of research fronts, 20 clustered topics are separatelyidentified from key papers with the average publication year no earlier than 2016. In the 2018 mining analysis of patent datafor engineering development hotspots, 53 ThemeScape patent maps (which can quickly and intuitively display the distributionof engineering development technologies) were developed by clustering the first 5000 most cited patent families publishedby Derwent Innovation of the 53 subject groups in nine fields in 2012–2017. This clustering is based on the semantic similaritybetween the patent texts.During the expert review stage, the final fronts are determined through expert nomination, expert discussion, andquestionnaire surveys. Field experts optimize and refine the results of the data analysis and interpret the patent maps. At thesame time, to compensate for any missing engineering fronts that may have been caused by algorithm limitations or datadelay in data mining, experts in each field are encouraged to check the results of the data analysis and nominatecomplementary fronts. After the data analysis and expert nomination, the total candidate research and development fronts areobtained. For the 2018 edition, a total of 482 candidate engineering research fronts and 415 candidate engineeringdevelopment fronts were obtained. Next, the field experts conduct a number of rounds of seminars and questionnaire surveys;they finally select about 10 engineering research fronts and 10 engineering development fronts in each field, and then furtherselect three key research fronts and three key development fronts to interpret in detail. 3. Overview of the Engineering Fronts 2018The Engineering Fronts 2018 report is based on 134 988 engineering research front hotspots obtained from co-citationclustering and 53 ThemeScape patent maps developed by Derwent Innovation of Clarivate Analytics. Through data selection,expert review, and expert revision, 95 engineering research fronts and 96 engineering development fronts were obtained. Atotal of 27 key engineering research fronts and 27 key engineering development fronts were selected and interpreted in detailin the nine fields (bold fonts in Tables 1–9).3.1. Mechanical and vehicle engineeringTable 1 presents the top 10 engineering research fronts and the top 10 engineering development fronts in the field ofmechanical and vehicle engineering. This field includes the following subjects: mechanical engineering, ship and ocean F. Cai et al. / Engineering 4 (2018)3engineering, aerospace science and technology, weapon science and technology, power and electrical equipment engineeringand technology, and transportation engineering.Among these subjects are the following