Disciplinary knowledge production and diffusion in science

This study examines patterns of dynamic disciplinary knowledge production and diffusion. It uses a citation data set of Scopus indexed journals and proceedings. The journal-level citation data set is aggregated into 27 subject areas and these subjects are selected as the unit of analysis. A three-step approach is employed: the first step examines disciplines’ citation characteristics through scientific trading dimensions; the second step analyzes citation flows between pairs of disciplines; and the third step uses ego-centric citation networks to assess individual disciplines’ citation flow diversity through Shannon entropy. Results show that measured by scientific impact, the subjects of Chemical Engineering, Energy, and Environmental Science have the fastest growths. Furthermore, most subjects are carrying out more diversified knowledge trading practices by importing higher volumes of knowledge from a greater number of subjects. The study also finds that the growth rates of disciplinary citations align with the growth rates of global R&D expenditures, thus providing evidences to support the impact of R&D expenditures on knowledge production.