arXiv · 2010.06111
Tracing the evolution of physics with a keyword co-occurrence network
Abstract
Describing the evolution of science is a salient work not only for revealing the scientific trend but also for establishing a scientific classification system. In this paper, we investigate the evolution of science by observing the structure and change of keyword co-occurrence networks. Starting from seven target physics fields and their initial keywords selected by experts from the Korean Physical Society, we generate keyword co-occurrence networks better to capture topological structure with our proposed approach. In this way, we can construct a more relevant and abundant keyword network from a small set of initial keywords. With these networks, we successfully identify the scientific sub-field by detecting communities and extracting core keywords of each community. Furthermore, we trace the temporal evolution of sub-fields with the time-snapshot keyword network, the resultant temporal change of the community membership explains the evolution of the research field well. Our approach for tracing the evolution of the research field with a keyword co-occurrence network can shed light on identifying and assessing the evolution of science.
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Taekho You, Oh-Hyun Kwon, Jisung Yoon, Woo-Sung Jung. 2020-10-13. Tracing the evolution of physics with a keyword co-occurrence network. https://doi.org/10.1007/s40042-020-00051-5
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