Developing a four-entities reinforced rank model to evaluate the topic influence in academic networks

Abstract

Several studies have reported on metrics for measuring the influence of scientific topics from different perspectives; however, current ranking methods ignore the reinforcing effect of other academic entities on topic influence. In this paper, we developed an effective topic ranking model, 4EFRRank, by modeling the influence transfer mechanism among all academic entities in a complex academic network using a four-layer network design that incorporates the strengthening effect of multiple entities on topic influence. The PageRank algorithm is utilized to calculate the initial influence of topics, papers, authors, and journals in a homogeneous network, whereas the HITS algorithm is utilized to express the mutual reinforcement between topics, papers, authors, and journals in a heterogeneous network, iteratively calculating the final topic influence value. Based on a specific interdisciplinary domain, social media data, we applied the 4ERRank model to the 19,527 topics included in the criteria. The experimental results demonstrate that the 4ERRank model can successfully synthesize the performance of classic co-word metrics and effectively reflect high citation topics. This study enriches the methodology for assessing topic impact and contributes to the development of future topic-based retrieval and prediction tasks.