Department of EECS, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan, USA.
PLoS One. 2009 Aug 18;4(8):e6547. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0006547.
Human knowledge and innovation are recorded in two media: scholarly publication and patents. These records not only document a new scientific insight or new method developed, but they also carefully cite prior work upon which the innovation is built.
We quantify the impact of information flow across fields using two large citation dataset: one spanning over a century of scholarly work in the natural sciences, social sciences and humanities, and second spanning a quarter century of United States patents.
We find that a publication's citing across disciplines is tied to its subsequent impact. In the case of patents and natural science publications, those that are cited at least once are cited slightly more when they draw on research outside of their area. In contrast, in the social sciences, citing within one's own field tends to be positively correlated with impact.
人类的知识和创新以两种媒介记录：学术出版物和专利。这些记录不仅记录了新的科学见解或开发的新方法，而且还仔细引用了创新所依据的先前工作。
我们使用两个大型引文数据集来量化跨领域的信息流的影响：一个数据集涵盖了自然科学、社会科学和人文学科一个多世纪的学术工作，另一个数据集涵盖了四分之一世纪的美国专利。
我们发现，出版物在学科间的引用与其后续的影响有关。在专利和自然科学出版物的情况下，那些至少被引用一次的出版物，如果它们借鉴了自身领域之外的研究，就会被稍微多引用一些。相比之下，在社会科学中，在自身领域内的引用往往与影响呈正相关。
