Physics – Physics and Society
Scientific paper
2009-04-07
PLoS ONE 5(5): e10355. 2010
Physics
Physics and Society
v3: re-ran analysis with new noise parameter choice; 10 pages for main paper; 11 pages for suppl. info
Scientific paper
10.1371/journal.pone.0010355
Despite the apparent cross-disciplinary interactions among scientific fields, a formal description of their evolution is lacking. Here we describe a novel approach to study the dynamics and evolution of scientific fields using a network-based analysis. We build an idea network consisting of American Physical Society Physics and Astronomy Classification Scheme (PACS) numbers as nodes representing scientific concepts. Two PACS numbers are linked if there exist publications that reference them simultaneously. We locate scientific fields using a community finding algorithm, and describe the time evolution of these fields over the course of 1985-2006. The communities we identify map to known scientific fields, and their age depends on their size and activity. We expect our approach to quantifying the evolution of ideas to be relevant for making predictions about the future of science and thus help to guide its development.
Gulbahce Natali
Herrera Mark
Roberts David C.
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