Scholarly network similarities: How bibliographic coupling networks, citation networks, cocitation networks, topical networks, coauthorship networks, and coword networks relate to each other

Abstract

This study explores the similarity among six types of scholarly networks aggregated at the institution level, including bibliographic coupling networks, citation networks, cocitation networks, topical networks, coauthorship networks, and coword networks. Cosine distance is chosen to measure the similarities among the six networks. The authors found that topical networks and coauthorship networks have the lowest similarity; cocitation networks and citation networks have high similarity; bibliographic coupling networks and cocitation networks have high similarity; and coword networks and topical networks have high similarity. In addition, through multidimensional scaling, two dimensions can be identified among the six networks: Dimension 1 can be interpreted as citation‐based versus noncitation‐based, and Dimension 2 can be interpreted as social versus cognitive. The authors recommend the use of hybrid or heterogeneous networks to study research interaction and scholarly communications.