121 research areas were explored through co-citation cluster on a group of highly cited papers, 2002-2007, from Essential Science Indicators and a map of science was generated to analyze how research areas were related to each other. On the basis, interdisciplinarity of 121 research areas were analyzed. A possible approach was provided to discover new scientific problems, potential interdiscipline and “hot” area in research areas by analysis of mapping and evolution of science.

In the coming decades, oil and gas will remain the main kinds of human energy. With the development of oil and gas industry, the middle-high permeability oil and gas resources are decreasing, which are large in scale, large reserves, high abundance of resources, easy to exploration and mining well. The research on lowpermeability oil and gas resources becomes more and more important. Using Thomson data analyzer (TDA) as the main analytical tool, patenting activities of exploration and development technologies for low-permeability oil and gas resources were analyzed based on the data from Derwent Innovations Index (DII). Since the first patent of low-permeability oil and gas resources applied in 1971, the number of patents has been increasing, especially in the latest 20 years. The patents focus on low-permeability oil and gas layer of identification and transformation
technology, drilling technology, etc. The United States, Canada, Russia are the major patents possessor states. Patents are mainly owned by super oil & gas companies. In recent years China have rapid development in R & D of low-permeability oil and gas resources, but the country remains a certain gap to the technology leaders.

We elicit filing strategies for patent families in China and Japan in two prominent technology fields: telecommunications and audiovisual technology. For the two destination countries we find substantial heterogeneity in filing strategies among applications from different countries. This heterogeneity cannot be explained with activities in technological subfields.