Finding linkage between sustainability science and technologies based on citation network analysis

Abstract

Sustainability Science has been widely accepted as an important research field all over the world. However, Sustainability Science is widespread to many research field such as Environment Science and Engineering, Architecture, Material Sciences, Civil Engineering, etc., therefore, it is important to discover hidden connections between sustainability science and other technologies. At the same time, with increasingly strong determination towards sustainable society, the tools for supporting discovering the linkage between technologies are necessary. This paper investigates the relationships between Sustainability Science and Complex Networks based on the citation network analysis. First, citation networks are generated based on academic paper datasets, and conducted the clustering for understanding the research fields to the Sustainability Science and other technologies. Next, we measure the textual similarities between clusters in Sustainability Science and Complex Networks. After that, we find the middle layer research area for connecting Complex Networks and Sustainability Science using analysis of the shared terms. These results could offer overviews of how Complex Networks contributes to the sustainability science, and assist in forming policies to promote key technologies towards the future of sustainable society.