IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/spr/scient/v102y2015i2d10.1007_s11192-014-1468-3.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

How small is the center of science? Short cross-disciplinary cycles in co-authorship graphs

Author

Listed:
  • Chris Fields

Abstract

Cycles that cross two or more boundaries between disciplines in the co-authorship graph for all of science are used to set upper limits on the number of co-authored papers required to cross 15 disciplines or subdisciplines ranging from macroeconomics to neurology. The upper limits obtained range from one (discrete mathematics, macroeconomics and nuclear physics) to six (neuroscience). The 15 disciplines or subdisciplines examined form a “small world” with an average separation of only 2.0 co-authorship links. It is conjectured that the high-productivity, high average degree centers of all scientific disciplines form a small world, and therefore that the diameter of the co-authorship graph of all of science is only slightly larger than the average diameter of the co-authorship graphs of its subdisciplines.

Suggested Citation

  • Chris Fields, 2015. "How small is the center of science? Short cross-disciplinary cycles in co-authorship graphs," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 102(2), pages 1287-1306, February.
    • Handle: RePEc:spr:scient:v:102:y:2015:i:2:d:10.1007_s11192-014-1468-3
    DOI: 10.1007/s11192-014-1468-3
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s11192-014-1468-3
    File Function: Abstract
    Download Restriction: Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1007/s11192-014-1468-3?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Hameroff, Stuart & Penrose, Roger, 1996. "Orchestrated reduction of quantum coherence in brain microtubules: A model for consciousness," Mathematics and Computers in Simulation (MATCOM), Elsevier, vol. 40(3), pages 453-480.
    2. Ismael Rafols & Alan L. Porter & Loet Leydesdorff, 2010. "Science overlay maps: A new tool for research policy and library management," Journal of the Association for Information Science & Technology, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 61(9), pages 1871-1887, September.
    3. David D. Ho & Avidan U. Neumann & Alan S. Perelson & Wen Chen & John M. Leonard & Martin Markowitz, 1995. "Rapid Turnover of Plasma Virions and CD4 Lymphocytes in HIV-1 Infection," Working Papers 95-01-002, Santa Fe Institute.
    4. Lambiotte, R. & Panzarasa, P., 2009. "Communities, knowledge creation, and information diffusion," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 3(3), pages 180-190.
    5. Barabási, A.L & Jeong, H & Néda, Z & Ravasz, E & Schubert, A & Vicsek, T, 2002. "Evolution of the social network of scientific collaborations," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 311(3), pages 590-614.
    6. D. S. Callaway & J. E. Hopcroft & J. M. Kleinberg & M. E. J. Newman & S. H. Strogatz, 2001. "Are Randomly Grown Graphs Really Random?," Working Papers 01-05-025, Santa Fe Institute.
    7. Andrea Landherr & Bettina Friedl & Julia Heidemann, 2010. "A Critical Review of Centrality Measures in Social Networks," Business & Information Systems Engineering: The International Journal of WIRTSCHAFTSINFORMATIK, Springer;Gesellschaft für Informatik e.V. (GI), vol. 2(6), pages 371-385, December.
    8. Alan L. Porter & Ismael Rafols, 2009. "Is science becoming more interdisciplinary? Measuring and mapping six research fields over time," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 81(3), pages 719-745, December.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Eli Rudinow Saetnan & Richard Philip Kipling, 2016. "Evaluating a European knowledge hub on climate change in agriculture: Are we building a better connected community?," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 109(2), pages 1057-1074, November.
    2. A. I. M. Jakaria Rahman & Raf Guns & Loet Leydesdorff & Tim C. E. Engels, 2016. "Measuring the match between evaluators and evaluees: cognitive distances between panel members and research groups at the journal level," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 109(3), pages 1639-1663, December.
    3. Chris Fields, 2015. "Co-authorship proximity of A. M. Turing Award and John von Neumann Medal winners to the disciplinary boundaries of computer science," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 104(3), pages 809-825, September.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Chris Fields, 2015. "Close to the edge: co-authorship proximity of Nobel laureates in Physiology or Medicine, 1991–2010, to cross-disciplinary brokers," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 103(1), pages 267-299, April.
    2. Diego Chavarro & Puay Tang & Ismael Rafols, 2014. "Interdisciplinarity and research on local issues: evidence from a developing country," Research Evaluation, Oxford University Press, vol. 23(3), pages 195-209.
    3. Seongkyoon Jeong & Jong-Chan Kim & Jae Young Choi, 2015. "Technology convergence: What developmental stage are we in?," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 104(3), pages 841-871, September.
    4. Rafols, Ismael & Leydesdorff, Loet & O’Hare, Alice & Nightingale, Paul & Stirling, Andy, 2012. "How journal rankings can suppress interdisciplinary research: A comparison between Innovation Studies and Business & Management," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 41(7), pages 1262-1282.
    5. Sándor Soós & Zsófia Vida & András Schubert, 2018. "Long-term trends in the multidisciplinarity of some typical natural and social sciences, and its implications on the SSH versus STM distinction," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 114(3), pages 795-822, March.
    6. Ran Xu & Navid Ghaffarzadegan, 2018. "Neuroscience bridging scientific disciplines in health: Who builds the bridge, who pays for it?," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 117(2), pages 1183-1204, November.
    7. Ronnie Ramlogan & Davide Consoli, 2014. "Dynamics of collaborative research medicine: the case of glaucoma," The Journal of Technology Transfer, Springer, vol. 39(4), pages 544-566, August.
    8. Leydesdorff, Loet & Rafols, Ismael, 2011. "Indicators of the interdisciplinarity of journals: Diversity, centrality, and citations," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 5(1), pages 87-100.
    9. Yan, Erjia & Ding, Ying & Cronin, Blaise & Leydesdorff, Loet, 2013. "A bird's-eye view of scientific trading: Dependency relations among fields of science," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 7(2), pages 249-264.
    10. Mason Youngblood & David Lahti, 2018. "A bibliometric analysis of the interdisciplinary field of cultural evolution," Palgrave Communications, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 4(1), pages 1-9, December.
    11. Haizheng Zhang & Baojun Qiu & Kristinka Ivanova & C. Lee Giles & Henry C. Foley & John Yen, 2010. "Locality and attachedness‐based temporal social network growth dynamics analysis: A case study of evolving nanotechnology scientific collaboration networks," Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 61(5), pages 964-977, May.
    12. Ruimin Ma & Erjia Yan, 2016. "Uncovering inter-specialty knowledge communication using author citation networks," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 109(2), pages 839-854, November.
    13. Hric, Darko & Kaski, Kimmo & Kivelä, Mikko, 2018. "Stochastic block model reveals maps of citation patterns and their evolution in time," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 12(3), pages 757-783.
    14. Chiara Carusi & Giuseppe Bianchi, 2020. "A look at interdisciplinarity using bipartite scholar/journal networks," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 122(2), pages 867-894, February.
    15. Kavitha Karunan & Hiran H. Lathabai & Thara Prabhakaran, 2017. "Discovering interdisciplinary interactions between two research fields using citation networks," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 113(1), pages 335-367, October.
    16. T. S. Evans & R. Lambiotte & P. Panzarasa, 2011. "Community structure and patterns of scientific collaboration in Business and Management," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 89(1), pages 381-396, October.
    17. Seokbeom Kwon & Alan Porter & Jan Youtie, 2016. "Navigating the innovation trajectories of technology by combining specialization score analyses for publications and patents: graphene and nano-enabled drug delivery," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 106(3), pages 1057-1071, March.
    18. Wahid-Ul-Ashraf, Akanda & Budka, Marcin & Musial, Katarzyna, 2019. "How to predict social relationships — Physics-inspired approach to link prediction," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 523(C), pages 1110-1129.
    19. Mark R. Costa & Jian Qin & Sarah Bratt, 2016. "Emergence of collaboration networks around large scale data repositories: a study of the genomics community using GenBank," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 108(1), pages 21-40, July.
    20. Leydesdorff, Loet & Wagner, Caroline S. & Bornmann, Lutz, 2019. "Interdisciplinarity as diversity in citation patterns among journals: Rao-Stirling diversity, relative variety, and the Gini coefficient," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 13(1), pages 255-269.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:spr:scient:v:102:y:2015:i:2:d:10.1007_s11192-014-1468-3. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.springer.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.