Drawing impossible boundaries

Field delineation of Social Network Science

Bibliographic Data

ID21443602
AuthorsHaiko Lietz (0000-0002-8408-1607, GESIS - Leibniz Institute for the Social Sciences, corresponding author)
Year2020
Volume125
Issue3
Pages2841-2876
Publication date2020-12-01
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueScientometrics (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0138-9130 • E-ISSN: 1588-2861
PublisherSpringer Science and Business Media LLC (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1007/s11192-020-03527-0
OpenAlexW3035137337
LanguageEN
Citations received6
References cited65

“Big” digital behavioral data increasingly allows large-scale and high-resolution analyses of the behavior and performance of persons or aggregated identities in whole fields. Often the desired system of study is only a subset of a larger database. The task of drawing a field boundary is complicated because socio-cultural systems are highly overlapping. Here, I propose a sociologically enhanced information retrieval method to delineate fields that is based on the reproductive mechanism of fields, able to account for field heterogeneity, and generally applicable also outside scientometric, e.g., in social media, contexts. The method is demonstrated in a delineation of the multidisciplinary and very heterogeneous Social Network Science field using the Web of Science database. The field consists of 25,760 publications and has a historical dimension (1916–2012). This set has high face validity and exhibits expected statistical properties like systemic growth and power law size distributions. Data is clean and disambiguated. The dataset with 45,580 author names and 23,026 linguistic concepts is publically available and supposed to enable high-quality analyses of an evolving complex socio-cultural system

Big data · Boundary (topology) · Data mining · Data science · Dimension (graph theory) · Face (sociological concept) · Field (mathematics) · Geography · Information retrieval · Interdisciplinarity · Multidisciplinary approach · Scale (ratio) · Set (abstract data type) · Social science · Sociology · Task (project management) · Complex Network Analysis Techniques · Computer Science · Mathematics · Opinion Dynamics and Social Influence · scientometrics and bibliometrics research

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