Abstract
The exchange of knowledge across different areas and disciplines plays a key role in the process of knowledge creation, and can stimulate innovation and the emergence of new fields. We develop here a quantitative framework to extract significant dependencies among scientific disciplines and turn them into a time-varying network whose nodes are the different fields, while the weighted links represent the flow of knowledge from one field to another at a given period of time. Drawing on a comprehensive data set on scientific production in modern physics and on the patterns of citations between articles published in the various fields in the last 30 years, we are then able to map, over time, how the ideas developed in a given field in a certain time period have influenced later discoveries in the same field or in other fields. The analysis of knowledge flows internal to each field displays a remarkable variety of temporal behaviours, with some fields of physics showing to be more self-referential than others. The temporal networks of knowledge exchanges across fields reveal cases of one field continuously absorbing knowledge from another field in the entire observed period, pairs of fields mutually influencing each other, but also cases of evolution from absorbing to mutual or even to back-nurture behaviors.
Highlights
Field information General physics The physics of elementary particles and fields Nuclear physics Atomic and molecular physics Electromagnetism, optics, acoustics, heat transfer, classical mechanics, fluid dynamics Physics of gases, plasmas, electric discharges Condensed matter: structural, mechanical and thermal properties Condensed matter: electronic structure, electrical, magnetic, optical properties Interdisciplinary physics and related areas of science and technology Geophysics, astronomy, astrophysics
Since each paper can be listed with multiple Physics and Astronomy Classification Scheme (PACS) codes we assign it to multiple fields
An opposite trend is observed for Interdisciplinary Physics and Astrophysics, which respectively take fifth and sixth place according to their growth rates, their field sizes are ranked eighth and ninth among these fields, reflecting their rapid development during the observing period
Summary
Field information General physics The physics of elementary particles and fields Nuclear physics Atomic and molecular physics Electromagnetism, optics, acoustics, heat transfer, classical mechanics, fluid dynamics Physics of gases, plasmas, electric discharges Condensed matter: structural, mechanical and thermal properties Condensed matter: electronic structure, electrical, magnetic, optical properties Interdisciplinary physics and related areas of science and technology Geophysics, astronomy, astrophysics. Overall, knowledge flows have become increasingly homogeneous over the last years, indicating the important role of interdisciplinary research[10,11,29,30,31]. Our findings provide insights into the basic mechanisms of knowledge exchange in science, and can turn very useful to understand the dynamics of scientific production and the growth of novelties in scientific d omains[32,33,34]
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