Finding knowledge paths among scientific disciplines

TL;DR

This paper analyzes how knowledge flows among scientific disciplines using citation networks, revealing differences in interdisciplinarity and self-containment between social sciences and natural sciences.

Contribution

It introduces a network-based method using shortest paths to empirically measure knowledge transfer across disciplines.

Findings

Social sciences are more self-contained and less accessible from other domains.

Science domains like biomedicine, chemistry, and physics are more interconnected.

Many social science knowledge paths require intermediate science disciplines.

Abstract

This paper discovers patterns of knowledge dissemination among scientific disciplines. While 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 that a node represents a Journal Citation Report 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 Report, this paper finds that social science domains tend to be more self-contained and thus 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 paper also finds that social science domains are more disunified than science domains, as three fifths of the knowledge paths from one social science domain to another need at least one science domain to serve as an intermediate. This paper contributes to discussions on disciplinarity and interdisciplinarity by providing empirical analysis.