Is science becoming more interdisciplinary? Measuring and mapping six research fields over time
Is science becoming more interdisciplinary? Measuring and mapping six research fields over time
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DOI：
10.1007/s11192-008-2197-2
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发表时间：
2009-12-01
期刊：
影响因子：
3.9
通讯作者：
Rafols, Ismael
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Porter, Alan L.;Rafols, Ismael
在过去的二十年里，有研究声称科学正在变得越来越跨学科。然而，证据是轶事或部分的。在这里，我们调查了1975年和2005年之间的跨学科程度已经改变了六个研究领域。要做到这一点，我们计算完善的文献计量学指标，以及一个新的跨学科指数（整合分数，又名Rao-Stirling多样性）和科学映射可视化方法。结果证明，在这30年期间，研究实践发生了显着变化，即每篇文章的引用学科和参考文献数量（均显示约50%的增长）以及每篇文章的共同作者（约75%的增长）。然而，新的跨学科指数仅显示出适度的增长（主要是5%左右的增长）。科学地图暗示，这是因为一篇文章的引用分布主要集中在邻近的学科领域。这些发现表明，科学确实正在变得更加跨学科，但进展很小--主要来自邻近领域，只适度增加与遥远认知领域的联系。指标和叠加科学地图的组合为跨学科研究特征的未来研究提供了一般基准。
In the last two decades there have been studies claiming that science is becoming ever more interdisciplinary. However, the evidence has been anecdotal or partial. Here we investigate how the degree of interdisciplinarity has changed between 1975 and 2005 over six research domains. To do so, we compute well-established bibliometric indicators alongside a new index of interdisciplinarity (Integration score, aka Rao-Stirling diversity) and a science mapping visualization method. The results attest to notable changes in research practices over this 30 year period, namely major increases in number of cited disciplines and references per article (both show about 50% growth), and co-authors per article (about 75% growth). However, the new index of interdisciplinarity only shows a modest increase (mostly around 5% growth). Science maps hint that this is because the distribution of citations of an article remains mainly within neighboring disciplinary areas. These findings suggest that science is indeed becoming more interdisciplinary, but in small steps - drawing mainly from neighboring fields and only modestly increasing the connections to distant cognitive areas. The combination of metrics and overlay science maps provides general benchmarks for future studies of interdisciplinary research characteristics.