Prestigious but less interdisciplinary: a network analysis on top-rated journals in medicine

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Du, Anbang, Head, Michael, Brede, Markus
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
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author Du, Anbang
Head, Michael
Brede, Markus
author_facet Du, Anbang
Head, Michael
Brede, Markus
contents Interdisciplinary research, a process of knowledge integration, is vital for scientific advancements. It remains unclear whether prestigious journals that are highly impactful lead in disseminating interdisciplinary knowledge. In this paper, by constructing topic-level correlation networks based on publications, we evaluated the interdisciplinarity of more and less prestigious journals in medicine. We found research from prestigious medical journals tends to be less interdisciplinary than research from other medical journals. We also established that cancer-related research is the main driver of interdisciplinarity in medical science. Our results indicate a weak tendency for differences in topic correlations between more and less prestigious journals to be co-located. Accordingly, we identified that interdisciplinarity in prestigious journals mainly differs from interdisciplinarity in other journals in areas such as infections, nervous system diseases and cancer. Overall, our results suggest that interdisciplinarity in science could benefit from prestigious journals easing rigid disciplinary boundaries.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2503_23406
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Prestigious but less interdisciplinary: a network analysis on top-rated journals in medicine
Du, Anbang
Head, Michael
Brede, Markus
Social and Information Networks
Interdisciplinary research, a process of knowledge integration, is vital for scientific advancements. It remains unclear whether prestigious journals that are highly impactful lead in disseminating interdisciplinary knowledge. In this paper, by constructing topic-level correlation networks based on publications, we evaluated the interdisciplinarity of more and less prestigious journals in medicine. We found research from prestigious medical journals tends to be less interdisciplinary than research from other medical journals. We also established that cancer-related research is the main driver of interdisciplinarity in medical science. Our results indicate a weak tendency for differences in topic correlations between more and less prestigious journals to be co-located. Accordingly, we identified that interdisciplinarity in prestigious journals mainly differs from interdisciplinarity in other journals in areas such as infections, nervous system diseases and cancer. Overall, our results suggest that interdisciplinarity in science could benefit from prestigious journals easing rigid disciplinary boundaries.
title Prestigious but less interdisciplinary: a network analysis on top-rated journals in medicine
topic Social and Information Networks
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2503.23406