Exploring Intellectual Network Structure of an Interdisciplinary Research Community: A Case Study of Taiwan's STS Community
Date Issued
2009
Date
2009
Author(s)
Yuan, Da-Yu
Abstract
Recently interdisciplinary research has been receiving more and more attention in Taiwan. Yet there is little relevant literature on interdisciplinary research in Taiwan, especially on how knowledge of different origins are connected and synthesized. A case in point is the development of Science, Technology and Society Studies (STS) community. This study aims to reveal the intellectual network structure inside interdisciplinary scholarly communities by exploring Taiwan’s STS, using Bibliometrics and Social Network Analysis (SNA).
Based on 61 STS members’ journals articles, the researcher created two relational matrices to represent the intellectual structure of the community, one through bibliometric coupling technique; the other, author co-citation technique. By applying several SNA techniques, the researcher is able to analyze the configuration, social subgroups and social structure of this intellectual network.
Research findings show that the network connection density tends to be low and that there are several central figures who have influence on network cohesion. Based on actors’ similarity of connection pattern, the network can be divided into 7 to 8 subgroups. Furthermore, the social role of “the bridge” was identified who were responsible for connecting different social subgroups. Findings also reveal that the communication in terms of citation occurs not only within but also between disciplines, which demonstrates that the intellectual interaction crosses the disciplinary boundaries. The last finding suggests that the network is woven on the basis of research topics and issues instead of disciplines. It also suggests the existence of knowledge redundancy to a certain degree, which could be critical in order to communicate in such a diverse scholarly environment.
Subjects
interdisciplinary research
scholarly communities
network structure
Science, Technology and Society Studies (STS)
Social Network Anaysis (SNA)
Bibliometrics
Type
thesis
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