Dataset Information

Quantitative Analysis of the Interdisciplinarity of Applied Mathematics.

ABSTRACT: The increasing use of mathematical techniques in scientific research leads to the interdisciplinarity of applied mathematics. This viewpoint is validated quantitatively here by statistical and network analysis on the corpus PNAS 1999-2013. A network describing the interdisciplinary relationships between disciplines in a panoramic view is built based on the corpus. Specific network indicators show the hub role of applied mathematics in interdisciplinary research. The statistical analysis on the corpus content finds that algorithms, a primary topic of applied mathematics, positively correlates, increasingly co-occurs, and has an equilibrium relationship in the long-run with certain typical research paradigms and methodologies. The finding can be understood as an intrinsic cause of the interdisciplinarity of applied mathematics.

SUBMITTER: Xie Z

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4564225 | biostudies-literature | 2015

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Quantitative Analysis of the Interdisciplinarity of Applied Mathematics.

Xie Zheng Z Duan Xiaojun X Ouyang Zhenzheng Z Zhang Pengyuan P

PloS one 20150909 9

The increasing use of mathematical techniques in scientific research leads to the interdisciplinarity of applied mathematics. This viewpoint is validated quantitatively here by statistical and network analysis on the corpus PNAS 1999-2013. A network describing the interdisciplinary relationships between disciplines in a panoramic view is built based on the corpus. Specific network indicators show the hub role of applied mathematics in interdisciplinary research. The statistical analysis on the c ...[more]

PMID: 26352604

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Project description:The study of biodiversity has grown exponentially in the last thirty years in response to demands for greater understanding of the function and importance of Earth's biodiversity and finding solutions to conserve it. Here, we test the hypothesis that biodiversity science has become more interdisciplinary over time. To do so, we analyze 97,945 peer-reviewed articles over a twenty-two-year time period (1990-2012) with a continuous time dynamic model, which classifies articles into concepts (i.e., topics and ideas) based on word co-occurrences. Using the model output, we then quantify different aspects of interdisciplinarity: concept diversity, that is, the diversity of topics and ideas across subdisciplines in biodiversity science, subdiscipline diversity, that is, the diversity of subdisciplines across concepts, and network structure, which captures interactions between concepts and subdisciplines. We found that, on average, concept and subdiscipline diversity in biodiversity science were either stable or declining, patterns which were driven by the persistence of rare concepts and subdisciplines and a decline in the diversity of common concepts and subdisciplines, respectively. Moreover, our results provide evidence that conceptual homogenization, that is, decreases in temporal β concept diversity, underlies the observed trends in interdisciplinarity. Together, our results reveal that biodiversity science is undergoing a dynamic phase as a scientific discipline that is consolidating around a core set of concepts. Our results suggest that progress toward addressing the biodiversity crisis via greater interdisciplinarity during the study period may have been slowed by extrinsic factors, such as the failure to invest in research spanning across concepts and disciplines. However, recent initiatives such as the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) may attract broader support for biodiversity-related issues and hence interdisciplinary approaches to address scientific, political, and societal challenges in the coming years.

Dataset Information

Quantitative Analysis of the Interdisciplinarity of Applied Mathematics.

Publications

Quantitative Analysis of the Interdisciplinarity of Applied Mathematics.

Similar Datasets

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