Finding knowledge paths among scientific disciplines

Abstract

This paper uncovers patterns of knowledge dissemination among scientific disciplines. Although the transfer of knowledge is largely unobservable, citations from one discipline to another have been proven to be an effective proxy to study disciplinary knowledge flow. This study constructs a knowledge‐flow network in which a node represents a Journal Citation Reports subject category and a link denotes the citations from one subject category to another. Using the concept of shortest path, several quantitative measurements are proposed and applied to a knowledge‐flow network. Based on an examination of subject categories in Journal Citation Reports, this study indicates that social science domains tend to be more self‐contained, so it is more difficult for knowledge from other domains to flow into them; at the same time, knowledge from science domains, such as biomedicine‐, chemistry‐, and physics‐related domains, can access and be accessed by other domains more easily. This study also shows that social science domains are more disunified than science domains, because three fifths of the knowledge paths from one social science domain to another require at least one science domain to serve as an intermediate. This work contributes to discussions on disciplinarity and interdisciplinarity by providing empirical analysis.

Research dynamics, impact, and dissemination: A topic‐level analysis

“…The topic‐to‐topic citation network was thus transformed into a distance‐based network through . It shows that the more citations from one topic to another, the wider the knowledge flow (Yan, ). All 2,500 paths (i.e., 50*50 by including paths to themselves) were identified among the 50 topics through the Dijkstra algorithm.…”

Which domains do open‐access journals do best in? A 5‐year longitudinal study

“…For instance, we count “ Applied Psychological Measurement+Psychology (miscellaneous) ” and “ Applied Psychological Measurement+Social Sciences (miscellaneous) ” as two individual entries. This treatment, also known as multiassignment, is consistent with prior journal‐level impact assessment (Yan, ; Yan, Ding, Cronin, & Leydesdorff, ), because it avoided the arbitrariness of assigning a journal to one of its few classifications. Despite its comprehensive coverage of science, social science, and humanity domains, a few limitations of ASJC should be noted: first, biomedical journals are more heavily represented in this schema (Guerrero‐Bote, Zapico‐Alonso, Espinosa‐Calvo, Gómez‐Crisóstomo, & de Moya‐Anegón, ); second, this schema has more detailed classification hierarchies for science domains than their social science counterparts (Yan, ; Yan & Zhu, ).…”

Research on systemic psychology in Latin America: An integrative review with methods and data triangulation

“…Finally, a study of knowledge paths between scientific disciplines is highlighted, based on data from the Web of Science, about citations between categories of subjects (Yan, 2014). The study concluded that the knowledge flow is easier from social sciences to sciences (life and biomedicine, physics, and technology) than in the opposite direction, which is attributed to the fact that the majority of the social sciences are more independent and primarily cite their own publications.…”