Open AccessInterdisciplinarity patterns of highly‐cited papers: A cross‐disciplinary analysis
Author(s) -
Chen Shiji,
Gingras Yves,
Arsenault Clément,
Larivière Vincent
Publication year - 2014
Publication title -
proceedings of the american society for information science and technology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
eISSN - 1550-8390
pISSN - 0044-7870
DOI - 10.1002/meet.2014.14505101108
Subject(s) - discipline , engineering ethics , specialty , natural science , sociology , social science , cross disciplinary , epistemology , psychology , engineering , data science , computer science , philosophy , psychiatry
This study analyzes the level of interdisciplinarity and interspecialty of highly cited papers. We distinguish research referring to different disciplines (referred to as “interdisciplinarity”) and research referring to different specialties of the same discipline (referred to as “interspecialty”). The results indicate that: (1) interspecialty research, has a greater impact on science development than intradisciplinary (or intraspecialty) research for most specialties and disciplines; (2) interdisciplinary research plays a more important role in Natural Sciences and Engineering than in Social Sciences and Humanities; and (3) interdisciplinary research is becoming more important in science either at the specialty or discipline level.