“…One such technique is main path analysis (MPA). Originally proposed in Hummon and Doreian (1989), MPA has prospered in the information science community since Verspagen (2007) and attracted abundant applications in various domains (Batagelj, Ferligoj, & Squazzoni, 2017;Carley, Hummon, & Harty, 1993;Colicchia & Strozzi, 2012;Hummon, Doreian, & Freeman, 1990;Hung, Liu, Lu, & Tseng, 2014;Liang, Wang, Xue, & Cui, 2016;Liu, Lu, Lu, & Lin, 2013;Lucio-Arias & Leydesdorff, 2008;Ma & Liu, 2016;Mina, Ramlogan, Tampubolon, & Metcalfe, 2007).…”