Exploring the direction and diversity of interdisciplinary knowledge diffusion: A case study of professor Zeyuan Liu's scientific publications

Abstract

Inspired by the concept of “potential energy” in physics, we propose a new indicator to measure the “direction” of interdisciplinary knowledge diffusion named “disciplinary potential energy” (DPE). We also used the Shannon entropy to measure the “diversity” of interdisciplinary knowledge diffusion. In memory of Professor Zeyuan Liu, a pioneer in the field of science of science (SoS) in China, we measured the direction and diversity of his interdisciplinary knowledge diffusion, based on his 371 publications and subsequent citations in the China National Knowledge Infrastructure (CNKI) database, and 236 journal articles and subsequent citations in the Chinese Social Science Citation Index (CSSCI) database, respectively. The findings are (1) the newly proposed indicator that has advantages over previous interdisciplinary indicators characterizing the relative location of each discipline in the knowledge flow, through both direct and indirect citations; (2) particular importance was attached to Liu's contributions to management science (focusing on SoS) and philosophy (focusing on philosophy of science and technology) because of the “reverse-flow” of his knowledge from “net-inflow” disciplines to “net-outflow” disciplines, although his contributions covered at least four disciplines, namely management science, economics (focusing on technical economics), philosophy, and engineering; and (3) Liu's research has had ever-increasing influence on management science over the past decade, while his interdisciplinary citation influence decreased in economics, philosophy and engineering. This study not only demonstrates how extensive Liu's knowledge contributions have been to Chinese academia. We also shed light on the methodology to measure interdisciplinary knowledge diffusion.