IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/spr/scient/v127y2022i6d10.1007_s11192-022-04387-6.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Measuring the disparity among scientific disciplines using Library of Congress Subject Headings

Author

Listed:
  • Fei Shu

    (Hangzhou Dianzi University
    Université de Montréal)

  • Jesse David Dinneen

    (Humboldt-Universität Zu Berlin)

  • Shiji Chen

    (Hangzhou Dianzi University)

Abstract

Examining the relationships among scientific disciplines is important today, but existing methods are limited by the contents and structure of their bibliographic databases. We therefore demonstrate a novel approach that measures disparity by examining the organization of published scientific books and monographs into Library of Congress Subject Headings. After outlining the method and analyses conducted, we compare our results with those produced by prior works, note potential implications of the demonstrated method for use by bibliometric practitioners, and suggest directions for further research.

Suggested Citation

  • Fei Shu & Jesse David Dinneen & Shiji Chen, 2022. "Measuring the disparity among scientific disciplines using Library of Congress Subject Headings," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 127(6), pages 3613-3628, June.
  • Handle: RePEc:spr:scient:v:127:y:2022:i:6:d:10.1007_s11192-022-04387-6
    DOI: 10.1007/s11192-022-04387-6
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s11192-022-04387-6
    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/s11192-022-04387-6?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. Chen, Shiji & Qiu, Junping & Arsenault, Clément & Larivière, Vincent, 2021. "Exploring the interdisciplinarity patterns of highly cited papers," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 15(1).
    2. Per Ahlgren & Bo Jarneving & Ronald Rousseau, 2003. "Requirements for a cocitation similarity measure, with special reference to Pearson's correlation coefficient," Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 54(6), pages 550-560, April.
    3. Vincent Larivière & Yves Gingras, 2010. "On the relationship between interdisciplinarity and scientific impact," Journal of the Association for Information Science & Technology, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 61(1), pages 126-131, January.
    4. Ismael Rafols & Martin Meyer, 2010. "Diversity and network coherence as indicators of interdisciplinarity: case studies in bionanoscience," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 82(2), pages 263-287, February.
    5. Fernanda Morillo & María Bordons & Isabel Gómez, 2003. "Interdisciplinarity in science: A tentative typology of disciplines and research areas," Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 54(13), pages 1237-1249, November.
    6. Loet Leydesdorff & Jordan A. Comins & Aaron A. Sorensen & Lutz Bornmann & Iina Hellsten, 2016. "Cited references and Medical Subject Headings (MeSH) as two different knowledge representations: clustering and mappings at the paper level," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 109(3), pages 2077-2091, December.
    7. Jian Wang & Bart Thijs & Wolfgang Glänzel, 2015. "Interdisciplinarity and Impact: Distinct Effects of Variety, Balance, and Disparity," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 10(5), pages 1-18, May.
    8. Wang, Jian & Veugelers, Reinhilde & Stephan, Paula, 2017. "Bias against novelty in science: A cautionary tale for users of bibliometric indicators," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 46(8), pages 1416-1436.
    9. Ed J. Rinia & Thed N. van Leeuwen & Anthony F. J. van Raan, 2002. "Impact measures of interdisciplinary research in physics," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 53(2), pages 241-248, February.
    10. Chen, Shiji & Arsenault, Clément & Larivière, Vincent, 2015. "Are top-cited papers more interdisciplinary?," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 9(4), pages 1034-1046.
    11. Michael H. MacRoberts & Barbara R. MacRoberts, 1989. "Problems of citation analysis: A critical review," Journal of the American Society for Information Science, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 40(5), pages 342-349, September.
    12. Lin Zhang & Beibei Sun & Lidan Jiang & Ying Huang, 2021. "On the relationship between interdisciplinarity and impact: Distinct effects on academic and broader impact [A Comparison of Two Approaches for Measuring Interdisciplinary Research Output: The Disc," Research Evaluation, Oxford University Press, vol. 30(3), pages 256-268.
    13. Shu, Fei & Dinneen, Jesse David & Asadi, Banafsheh & Julien, Charles-Antoine, 2017. "Mapping science using Library of Congress Subject Headings," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 11(4), pages 1080-1094.
    14. Alfredo Yegros-Yegros & Ismael Rafols & Pablo D’Este, 2015. "Does Interdisciplinary Research Lead to Higher Citation Impact? The Different Effect of Proximal and Distal Interdisciplinarity," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 10(8), pages 1-21, August.
    15. Kwan Yi & Lois Mai Chan, 2010. "Revisiting the syntactical and structural analysis of Library of Congress Subject Headings for the digital environment," Journal of the Association for Information Science & Technology, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 61(4), pages 677-687, April.
    16. Vincent Larivière & Yves Gingras, 2010. "On the relationship between interdisciplinarity and scientific impact," Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 61(1), pages 126-131, January.
    17. Kwan Yi & Lois Mai Chan, 2010. "Revisiting the syntactical and structural analysis of Library of Congress Subject Headings for the digital environment," Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 61(4), pages 677-687, April.
    18. Andy Stirling, 2007. "A General Framework for Analysing Diversity in Science, Technology and Society," SPRU Working Paper Series 156, SPRU - Science Policy Research Unit, University of Sussex Business School.
    19. Fernanda Morillo & María Bordons & Isabel Gómez, 2001. "An approach to interdisciplinarity through bibliometric indicators," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 51(1), pages 203-222, April.
    20. Yoshiko Okubo, 1997. "Bibliometric Indicators and Analysis of Research Systems: Methods and Examples," OECD Science, Technology and Industry Working Papers 1997/1, OECD Publishing.
    21. 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.
    22. Lindell Bromham & Russell Dinnage & Xia Hua, 2016. "Interdisciplinary research has consistently lower funding success," Nature, Nature, vol. 534(7609), pages 684-687, June.
    23. Shu, Fei & Julien, Charles-Antoine & Zhang, Lin & Qiu, Junping & Zhang, Jing & Larivière, Vincent, 2019. "Comparing journal and paper level classifications of science," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 13(1), pages 202-225.
    24. Jonathan M. Levitt & Mike Thelwall, 2008. "Is multidisciplinary research more highly cited? A macrolevel study," Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 59(12), pages 1973-1984, October.
    25. Thomas W. Steele & Jeffrey C. Stier, 2000. "The impact of interdisciplinary research in the environmental sciences: a forestry case study," Journal of the American Society for Information Science, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 51(5), pages 476-484.
    26. Lin Zhang & Ronald Rousseau & Wolfgang Glänzel, 2016. "Diversity of references as an indicator of the interdisciplinarity of journals: Taking similarity between subject fields into account," Journal of the Association for Information Science & Technology, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 67(5), pages 1257-1265, May.
    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. Giulio Giacomo Cantone, 2024. "How to measure interdisciplinary research? A systemic design for the model of measurement," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 129(8), pages 4937-4982, August.

    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. Shiji Chen & Yanhui Song & Fei Shu & Vincent Larivière, 2022. "Interdisciplinarity and impact: the effects of the citation time window," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 127(5), pages 2621-2642, May.
    2. Chen, Shiji & Qiu, Junping & Arsenault, Clément & Larivière, Vincent, 2021. "Exploring the interdisciplinarity patterns of highly cited papers," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 15(1).
    3. Giulio Giacomo Cantone, 2024. "How to measure interdisciplinary research? A systemic design for the model of measurement," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 129(8), pages 4937-4982, August.
    4. Andrea Bonaccorsi & Nicola Melluso & Francesco Alessandro Massucci, 2022. "Exploring the antecedents of interdisciplinarity at the European Research Council: a topic modeling approach," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 127(12), pages 6961-6991, December.
    5. Jingjing Ren & Fang Wang & Minglu Li, 2023. "Dynamics and characteristics of interdisciplinary research in scientific breakthroughs: case studies of Nobel-winning research in the past 120 years," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 128(8), pages 4383-4419, August.
    6. Keisuke Okamura, 2019. "Interdisciplinarity revisited: evidence for research impact and dynamism," Palgrave Communications, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 5(1), pages 1-9, December.
    7. Seolmin Yang & So Young Kim, 2023. "Knowledge-integrated research is more disruptive when supported by homogeneous funding sources: a case of US federally funded research in biomedical and life sciences," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 128(6), pages 3257-3282, June.
    8. Chen, Shiji & Arsenault, Clément & Larivière, Vincent, 2015. "Are top-cited papers more interdisciplinary?," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 9(4), pages 1034-1046.
    9. Lina Xu & Steven Dellaportas & Zhiqiang Yang & Jin Wang, 2023. "More on the relationship between interdisciplinary accounting research and citation impact," Accounting and Finance, Accounting and Finance Association of Australia and New Zealand, vol. 63(4), pages 4779-4803, December.
    10. Lina Xu & Steven Dellaportas & Jin Wang, 2022. "A study of interdisciplinary accounting research: analysing the diversity of cited references," Accounting and Finance, Accounting and Finance Association of Australia and New Zealand, vol. 62(2), pages 2131-2162, June.
    11. Alfonso Ávila-Robinson & Cristian Mejia & Shintaro Sengoku, 2021. "Are bibliometric measures consistent with scientists’ perceptions? The case of interdisciplinarity in research," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 126(9), pages 7477-7502, September.
    12. Zhang, Yang & Wang, Yang & Du, Haifeng & Havlin, Shlomo, 2024. "Delayed citation impact of interdisciplinary research," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 18(1).
    13. Shunshun Shi & Wenyu Zhang & Shuai Zhang & Jie Chen, 2018. "Does prestige dimension influence the interdisciplinary performance of scientific entities in knowledge flow? Evidence from the e-government field," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 117(2), pages 1237-1264, November.
    14. Abramo, Giovanni & D’Angelo, Ciriaco Andrea & Zhang, Lin, 2018. "A comparison of two approaches for measuring interdisciplinary research output: The disciplinary diversity of authors vs the disciplinary diversity of the reference list," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 12(4), pages 1182-1193.
    15. Qing Ke, 2023. "Interdisciplinary research and technological impact: evidence from biomedicine," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 128(4), pages 2035-2077, April.
    16. Meijun Liu & Sijie Yang & Yi Bu & Ning Zhang, 2023. "Female early-career scientists have conducted less interdisciplinary research in the past six decades: evidence from doctoral theses," Palgrave Communications, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 10(1), pages 1-16, December.
    17. Feng Shi & James Evans, 2023. "Surprising combinations of research contents and contexts are related to impact and emerge with scientific outsiders from distant disciplines," Nature Communications, Nature, vol. 14(1), pages 1-13, December.
    18. Tanmoy Chakraborty, 2018. "Role of interdisciplinarity in computer sciences: quantification, impact and life trajectory," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 114(3), pages 1011-1029, March.
    19. Xiaojing Cai & Xiaozan Lyu & Ping Zhou, 2023. "The relationship between interdisciplinarity and citation impact—a novel perspective on citation accumulation," Palgrave Communications, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 10(1), pages 1-12, December.
    20. Hongyu Zhou & Raf Guns & Tim C. E. Engels, 2022. "Are social sciences becoming more interdisciplinary? Evidence from publications 1960–2014," Journal of the Association for Information Science & Technology, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 73(9), pages 1201-1221, September.

    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:127:y:2022:i:6:d:10.1007_s11192-022-04387-6. 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.