A model for dynamical evolution of science in space

TL;DR

This paper models the evolving topological structure of science as a dynamic spatial process where authors and papers move and cluster in a 2D space, reflecting interdisciplinarity and novelty.

Contribution

It introduces a novel dynamical model for the spatial evolution of scientific topics, incorporating author collaboration and publication processes in a 2D space.

Findings

Spatial structures range from Gaussian distributions to clusters.

The model captures the emergence of interdisciplinarity and novelty.

Inhomogeneities influence the spatial evolution of science.

Abstract

How does the topological space of science emerge? Inspired by the concept of maps of science, i.e. mapping scientific topics to a scientific space, we ask which topological structure a dynamical process of authors collaborating and publishing papers can generate. We propose a dynamical process where papers as well as new groups receive topical positions embedded in a two-dimensional euclidean space. The precise position of new papers depends on previous topics of the respective authors and is chosen randomly in a surrounding neighborhood including novelty and interdisciplinarity. Depending on parameters, the spatial structure resembles a simple Gaussian distribution, or spatial clusters of side-topics are observed. We quantify the time-evolution of the spatial structure and discuss the influence of inhomogenities.