A study of differences between all-author bibliographic coupling analysis and all-author co-citation analysis in detecting the intellectual structure of a discipline

Abstract

Many studies have proved that author bibliographic coupling analysis (ABCA) and author co-citation analysis (ACA) can provide important information for the detection of intellectual structure. However, most of these studies are focused on the first author. This implies a lack of consideration of all authors in the ABCA and ACA studies. This paper studies the all-author bibliographic coupling analysis (AABCA) and all-author co-citation analysis (AACA) to test whether and in what aspects these two all-author network methods produce different results when detecting the intellectual structure of a discipline. We find that the intellectual structures identified by AABCA and AACA are generally similar, but when it comes to detailed structures, the results are different. AABCA detects a richer variety of research topics that seem to better reflect current status and trends in the discipline, and more clearly identifies the active authors corresponding to a research topic. In contrast, AACA is more sensitive to traditional and stable research topics than to emerging niche research topics. In addition, it is more comprehensive in the discovery of authors' research interests, and it can identify multiple research interests of one author. Therefore, AABCA and AACA play different roles in the study of the intellectual structure of a discipline, indicating that the combination of the two approaches helps to obtain a more comprehensive and specific intellectual structure.