Journal Publications in Medicine: Ranking vs. Interdisciplinarity

Fuente: arXiv
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Hauptverfasser: Du, Anbang, Head, Michael, Brede, Markus
Format: Preprint
Veröffentlicht: 2025
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author Du, Anbang
Head, Michael
Brede, Markus
author_facet Du, Anbang
Head, Michael
Brede, Markus
contents Interdisciplinary research is critical for innovation and addressing complex societal issues. We characterise the interdisciplinary knowledge structure of PubMed research articles in medicine as correlation networks of medical concepts and compare the interdisciplinarity of articles between high-ranking (impactful) and less high-ranking (less impactful) medical journals. We found that impactful medical journals tend to publish research that are less interdisciplinary than less impactful journals. Observing that they bridge distant knowledge clusters in the networks, we find that cancer-related research can be seen as one of the main drivers of interdisciplinarity in medical science. Using signed difference networks, we also investigate the clustering of deviations between high and low impact journal correlation networks. We generally find a mild tendency for strong link differences to be adjacent. Furthermore, we find topic clusters of deviations that shift over time. In contrast, topic clusters in the original networks are static over time and can be seen as the core knowledge structure in medicine. Overall, journals and policymakers should encourage initiatives to accommodate interdisciplinarity within the existing infrastructures to maximise the potential patient benefits from IDR.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2509_24994
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Journal Publications in Medicine: Ranking vs. Interdisciplinarity
Du, Anbang
Head, Michael
Brede, Markus
Social and Information Networks
Physics and Society
Interdisciplinary research is critical for innovation and addressing complex societal issues. We characterise the interdisciplinary knowledge structure of PubMed research articles in medicine as correlation networks of medical concepts and compare the interdisciplinarity of articles between high-ranking (impactful) and less high-ranking (less impactful) medical journals. We found that impactful medical journals tend to publish research that are less interdisciplinary than less impactful journals. Observing that they bridge distant knowledge clusters in the networks, we find that cancer-related research can be seen as one of the main drivers of interdisciplinarity in medical science. Using signed difference networks, we also investigate the clustering of deviations between high and low impact journal correlation networks. We generally find a mild tendency for strong link differences to be adjacent. Furthermore, we find topic clusters of deviations that shift over time. In contrast, topic clusters in the original networks are static over time and can be seen as the core knowledge structure in medicine. Overall, journals and policymakers should encourage initiatives to accommodate interdisciplinarity within the existing infrastructures to maximise the potential patient benefits from IDR.
title Journal Publications in Medicine: Ranking vs. Interdisciplinarity
topic Social and Information Networks
Physics and Society
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.24994