Mapping the De Facto Governance in the Case of Emerging Science and Technologies

In this study, we discuss the use of novel scientometric mapping techniques as informative and interpretative tools about the rapid dynamics and uncertainties featuring in Emerging Science and Technologies (ESTs). We show how these techniques can provide perspectives on and crosscuts of the geographical, social, and cognitive spaces of the complex emergence process. Shedding light on these spaces the set of, both intentional and un-intentional, institutional arrangements that are established in the emergence of novel science and technologies that is, as de facto governance can be revealed. The informative and interpretative power of these tools resides in their transversal flexibility within and across databases, which themselves are characterized by longitudinal and institutional rigidities. Changing informed perspectives can play a crucial role in supporting the design of governance that is ?tentative?, i.e. forms of governance aiming to address the complexity, interdependencies, and contingencies featuring in ESTs. We discuss the contribution of these mapping techniques to the understanding of the phenomenon of tentative governance of ESTs across three case studies, namely RNA interference (RNAi), Human Papilloma Virus (HPV) and Thiopurine Methyltransferase (TPMT) testing technologies.