Skip to main content

Advertisement

Investigating the application of work–energy metaphor in interdisciplinary citation analysis

  • Published:
Scientometrics Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

Metaphors play a crucial role in facilitating the comprehension and analysis of knowledge. “Knowledge as energy” is a well-established metaphorical framework that provides unique benefits for comprehending the dissemination of knowledge and enabling its quantification. Nevertheless, empirical studies employing this framework are limited, especially in the area of the work–energy metaphor, which primarily remains theoretical. This paper proposes an application scheme for the work– energy metaphor in interdisciplinary citation analysis. In this scheme, disciplines are considered entities; various factors that drive the progress of a discipline are considered forces; energy is considered the knowledge produced or transferred in the citations. Building upon the work–energy theorem in physics, this study developed indicators reflecting citation quality and velocity to assess interdisciplinary research progression. An empirical investigation was carried out, utilizing these indicators to evaluate the influence of interdisciplinary citations on disciplines. In the experiments, we used Library and Information Science (LIS) from 2012 to 2021 as an example to analyze the impact of interdisciplinary citations from LIS on other disciplines over two time periods. The experiments demonstrated the feasibility of the work–energy metaphorical framework proposed in this paper. It was also found that Computer Science, Management, and Business experienced the highest impact from LIS interdisciplinary citations and exhibited steady growth over a 10-year period. Environmental Science has substantial potential for the future.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Subscribe and save

Springer+ Basic
$34.99 /Month
  • Get 10 units per month
  • Download Article/Chapter or eBook
  • 1 Unit = 1 Article or 1 Chapter
  • Cancel anytime
Subscribe now

Buy Now

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Fig. 1
Fig. 2
Fig. 3

Similar content being viewed by others

References

Download references

Acknowledgements

The research described in this paper is supported by the National Social Science Found of China (No.23BTQ053 and No.19VXK09).

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

Authors

Contributions

Guoyang Rong conceived of the method in this paper, led the data processing, and wrote a draft. Changling Li provided key guidance on the paper’s concept, research methodology, and writing. Zhijian Zhang and Shuaipu Chen assisted with the coding for data processing. Yuxing Qian helped with editing and revising the manuscript.

Corresponding authors

Correspondence to Guoyang Rong or Changling Li.

Ethics declarations

Conflict of interest

The authors have no competing interests to declare that are relevant to the content of this article.

Additional information

Publisher's Note

Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

Rights and permissions

Springer Nature or its licensor (e.g. a society or other partner) holds exclusive rights to this article under a publishing agreement with the author(s) or other rightsholder(s); author self-archiving of the accepted manuscript version of this article is solely governed by the terms of such publishing agreement and applicable law.

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

Rong, G., Li, C., Zhang, Z. et al. Investigating the application of work–energy metaphor in interdisciplinary citation analysis. Scientometrics 129, 3573–3591 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-024-05019-x

Download citation

  • Received:

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-024-05019-x

Keywords