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Interdisciplinary scholarly communication: an exploratory study for the field of joint attention

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Abstract

Understanding communications across disciplines is critical to the promotion of interdisciplinary innovation. Using research into the psychological concept of joint attention (JA) as an example of shared interest, this paper focuses on studies of JA across three different domains (child psychology, robotics, and human–computer interaction) and analyzes topic evolution in JA in these three domains, as well as lead–lag and topic similarity between domains. Our empirical study has yielded interesting findings. First, the analysis of topic evolution indicates that the three domains have distinctive topic evolution patterns, which reflected in both the topic division and merge phenomena and points of focus. Second, lead–lag clearly exists between different domains, which allowed knowledge diffusion to be viewed from a macroscopic perspective. Third, topic similarity across different domains can be identified with its migrations and changes in content, which helps to improve understanding of the impact of topics between domains and of interdependence within disciplines. This paper provides a foundation for further research that may improve communications across disciplines, thereby facilitating interdisciplinary innovation.

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Notes

  1. Related terms include “shared attention,” “shared focus,” “shared gaze,” “eye gazing,” “dyadic attention,” and “triadic attention.”

  2. Topics and their popularity values in the three domains of each timespan can be visited at: https://figshare.com/s/b1065f3ede721926ed6a. Supplementary data for the similarity matrix can be visited at: https://figshare.com/s/d0099e1c6ee078f20c15.

  3. The representative keywords and their frequencies can be visited at: https://figshare.com/s/ab841780b9fbddfa3d89.

  4. The complete set of topic pairs with similarity value higher than 0.6 can be viewed at: https://figshare.com/s/bcd4d310520f96b9df29.

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Acknowledgements

The authors warmly thank reviewers for their valuable suggestions. This research was supported by the Science and Technology Planning Project of Guangdong Province (China) [Grant Number: 2016B030303003] and the National Social Science Fund of China [Grant Number: 15CTQ022].

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Information Management, Guangzhou Higher Education Mega Center, Sun Yat-sen University, Waihuan East Road 132, Guangzhou, 510006, Guangdong, China

    Jian Xu, Shuqing Deng & Andrew Madden

  2. School of Informatics, Computing, and Engineering, Indiana University, Bloomington, IN, USA

    Ying Ding

  3. School of Information Management, Wuhan University, Wuhan, Hubei, China

    Ying Ding

  4. School of Management, Tianjin Normal University, Tianjin, China

    Ying Ding

  5. School of Management, Jilin University, Changchun, Jilin, China

    Ying Ding

  6. School of Management, Shanxi Medical University, Taiyuan, Shanxi, China

    Ying Ding

  7. Center for Complex Networks and Systems Research, School of Informatics, Computing, and Engineering, Indiana University, Bloomington, IN, USA

    Yi Bu

  8. Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences, Indiana University, Bloomington, IN, USA

    Chen Yu

  9. College of Economics and Management, Zhejiang Normal University, Jinhua, Zhejiang, China

    Yimin Zou

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  1. Jian Xu
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Correspondence to Jian Xu.

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Xu, J., Ding, Y., Bu, Y. et al. Interdisciplinary scholarly communication: an exploratory study for the field of joint attention. Scientometrics 119, 1597–1619 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-019-03106-y

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