2014/07/31 by Jan Moritz Joseph, Joseph, Jan Moritz, Jens Christian Claussen +1
Computer Science · Physics and Astronomy · #Adaptation and Self-Organizing Systems (nlin.AO) #Complex Network Analysis Techniques #Data Visualization and Analytics #Digital Libraries (cs.DL) #FOS: Computer and information sciences #FOS: Physical sciences #Physics and Society (physics.soc-ph) #Social and Information Networks (cs.SI) #Topological and Geometric Data Analysis #cs.DL #cs.SI #nlin.AO #physics.soc-ph
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.1407.8422
6 pages, 7 figures, comments and suggestions are welcome
arxiv created 2014/07/31 · openalex publication_date 2014/07/31 · arxiv updated 2014/08/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
How does the topological space of science emerge? Inspired by the concept of maps of science, i.e. mapping scientific topics to a scientific space, we ask which topological structure a dynamical process of authors collaborating and publishing papers can generate. We propose a dynamical process where papers as well as new groups receive topical positions embedded in a two-dimensional euclidean space. The precise position of new papers depends on previous topics of the respective authors and is chosen randomly in a surrounding neighborhood including novelty and interdisciplinarity. Depending on parameters, the spatial structure resembles a simple Gaussian distribution, or spatial clusters of side-topics are observed. We quantify the time-evolution of the spatial structure and discuss the influence of inhomogenities.