Benchmarking Clarivate CPT-based formulations for identifying hot thematic research fronts: derivation of a controlled-growth indicator

Purpose The study aims to identify the hot and impactful research fronts that are central to understanding emerging dynamics in contemporary science. Clarivate’s Citation Productivity and Trajectory (CPT) indicator has played a pivotal role in institutionalizing research-front analysis; however, recent extensions that incorporate growth and scale dimensions raise unresolved methodological questions about dominance, sensitivity and temporal robustness. Design/methodology/approach This study adopts a comparative and evaluative approach to benchmark CPT against growth-driven (R-CPT) and scale-driven (S-CPT) formulations using bibliometric data from the digital educational ecosystem. Seventeen research fronts were analyzed across three rolling time windows (2019–2023, 2020–2024 and 2021–2025) based on consistent Scopus-derived indicators. Findings The results show that CPT primarily captures citation visibility, R-CPT accentuates growth-driven hotness but amplifies winner-takes-almost-all effects, while S-CPT emphasizes scale-driven diffusion at the expense of responsiveness to emerging dynamics. Empirically, it produces more balanced score distributions, smoother rank transitions and greater temporal robustness across rolling windows. Originality/value Building on these empirical findings, the study derives a controlled-growth formulation (C-CPT) as a methodological outcome rather than a predefined indicator. By removing the scale term from growth-driven extensions while retaining growth momentum, citation leverage and diffusion immediacy, C-CPT produces a markedly less concentrated score distribution than either extended formulation. The study contributes a controlled comparison of CPT-based formulations and clarifies how indicator design determines which research fronts become visible within an observation window.