2021 VOLUME 1 ISSUE 4
RESEARCH ARTICLE
Discovering the communication structures of directed weighted citation networks in library and information science through Pathfinder
AUTHOR
Ruimin Ma, Rongxu Zhang
ABSTRACT
Communication structures mining is of importance for the understanding of the communities of a domain and knowledge flow among papers and authors. In this paper, we take advantage of Pathfinder, a method for pruning networks, to discover the communities of a directed weighted citation network and its main knowledge flow structure. Meanwhile, in the course of the analysis, necessary data transformations are carried out, and proper parameters for Pathfinder are determined. It is found that Pathfinder plays a multifaceted role in the discovery of communication structures of directed weighted citation networks, which could provide more systematic insights to citation network analytics.
KEYWORDS
Communication structure; Citation network; Knowledge flow; Community; Pathfinder