@article{e43c197f6f6644a9b562d3a9cf0294a3,
title = "Using text analysis to quantify the similarity and evolution of scientific disciplines",
abstract = "We use an information-theoretic measure of linguistic similarity to investigate the organization and evolution of scientific fields. An analysis of almost 20M papers from the past three decades reveals that the linguistic similarity is related but different from experts and citation-based classifications, leading to an improved view on the organization of science. A temporal analysis of the similarity of fields shows that some fields (e.g. computer science) are becoming increasingly central, but that on average the similarity between pairs of disciplines has not changed in the last decades. This suggests that tendencies of convergence (e.g. multi-disciplinarity) and divergence (e.g. specialization) of disciplines are in balance.",
keywords = "Dissimilarity measures, Information theory, Science of science",
author = "La{\'e}rcio Dias and Martin Gerlach and Joachim Scharloth and Altmann, {Eduardo G.}",
note = "Funding Information: Data accessibility. Deposited at Zenodo https://dx.doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.816303 [55]. Authors{\textquoteright} contributions. L.D. processed the data and prepared the figures. E.G.A. retrieved the data. L.D., M.G. and E.G.A. analysed the data. L.D., M. G., J.S. and E.G.A. designed the research, interpreted the results, wrote the manuscript and gave their final approval for publication. Competing interests. The authors declare no competing interests. Funding. L.D. received financial support from CNPq/Brazil through the programme {\textquoteleft}Science without Borders{\textquoteright}. Acknowledgements. We thank M. Palzenberger and the Max Planck Digital Library for providing access to the data, M. de Domenico for insightful discussions, and S. Haan and the Centre for Translational Data Science (University of Sydney) for helping with figures 1 and 3. Funding Information: L.D. received financial support from CNPq/Brazil through the programme {\textquoteleft}Science without Borders{\textquoteright}. Publisher Copyright: {\textcopyright} 2018 The Authors.",
year = "2018",
month = jan,
day = "17",
doi = "10.1098/rsos.171545",
language = "English",
volume = "5",
journal = "Royal Society Open Science",
issn = "2054-5703",
publisher = "The Royal Society",
number = "1",
}