Can bibliometrics contribute to the study of interdisciplinary influence: a case study of physics

摘要

In this study, the mutual influencing of different fields of science is analysed by looking at the so called "knowledge balance" between disciplines, based on the difference between numbers of reciprocal references by publications in two disciplines. A conclusion is that Physics and Basic life Sciences appear to be important sources of inspiration for developments in other disciplines. Furthermore a method is applied, which compares the age distributions of non-disciplinary citations given to a subfield with exponential regression values. Extreme deviations from the regression lines are indicators for key papers which appear to be responsible for large interdisciplinary effects in current research. Cases in physics lead to the conjecture that large interdisciplinary impact appears to be caused more by diffusion of methods or even software and less by sudden breakthroughs.