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International audience; In the first part of this paper, we shall discuss the historical context of Science of Science both in China and at world level. In the second part, we use the unsupervised combination of GNG clustering with feature maximization metrics and associated contrast graphs to present an analysis of the contents of selected academic journal papers in Science of Science in China and the construction of an overall map of the research topics’ structure during the last 40 years. Furthermore, we highlight how the topics have evolved through analysis of publication dates and also use author information to clarify the topics’ content. The results obtained have been reviewed and approved by 3 leading experts in this field and interestingly show that Chinese Science of Science has gradually become mature in the last 40 years, evolving from the general nature of the discipline itself to related disciplines and their potential interactions, from qualitative analysis to quantitative and visual analysis, and from general research on the social function of science to its more specific economic function and strategic function studies. Consequently, the proposed novel method can be used without supervision, parameters and help from any external knowledge to obtain very clear and precise insights about the development of a scientific domain. The output of the topic extraction part of the method (clustering + feature maximization) is finally compared with the output of the well-known LDA approach by experts in the domain which serves to highlight the very clear superiority of the proposed approach.

International audience; In a first part of this paper, we highlight the historical context of Science of Science both in China and at a world level. In a second part, based on the unsupervised combination of GNG (neural gas) clustering with feature maximization metrics and associated contrast graphs, we perform an analysis of the contents of selected academic journal papers in Science of Science in China and the construction of an overall map of the research topic structure during the last 40 years. Furthermore, we highlight the topic evolution by the exploitation of the publication dates andmake additional use of the author's information for the sake of clarifying topics content. The obtained results, validated by domain experts, interestingly show that the Chinese Science of Science has gradually become mature in the last 40 years, turning from the general nature of the discipline to the relative disciplines and their potential interactions, from the qualitative analysis to the quantitative and visual analysis, and from the general research on social function of science to more specific economic function and strategic function studies. Consequently, the proposed novel method permits without supervision, without parameters and without help of any external knowledge to have very clear andvery precise insights of the development of a scientific domain.; Dans une première partie de cet article, nous mettons en lumière le contexte historique de la Science de la Science en Chine et à l’échelle mondiale. Dans une deuxième partie, en utilisant la combinaison d’un clustering GNG (gaz de neurones), des mesures de maximisation des traits et des graphes de contraste, nous effectuons une analyse du contenu d’articles de revues académiques sélectionnées dans le domaine de la Science de la Science en Chine et construisons une carte globale de la recherche au cours des 40 dernières années. De plus, nous mettons en évidence l’évolution du domaine en exploitant les dates de publication et les informations auteurs afin de clarifier le contenu des sujets. Les résultats obtenus, validés par l’expertise, montrent clairement que la Science de la Science en Chine a progressivement mûri au cours des 40 dernières années, passant de la nature générale de la discipline aux disciplines connexes et à leurs interactions potentielles, de l’analyse qualitative à l’analyse quantitative et visuelle, et de la recherche générale sur la fonction sociale de la science aux études plus spécifiques sur sa fonction économique et stratégique. La méthode originale proposée permet d’obtenir sans supervision, sans paramètres et sans connaissances externes une vision à la fois très claire et très précise du développement d’un domaine scientifique.