RESEARCH PAPERS
Wang Kang, Zhang Xin, Liu Qiwei, Cui Linwei
[Purpose/Significance] Constructing a correlation model that integrates structural features and semantic connotations to achieve accurate identification of fine-grained topics in knowledge domains, while revealing the dynamic evolution of the relationships among the intersectionality, burstness, and novelty of finegrained topics, providing theoretical and methodological support for the research foundation, development trends, and intrinsic driving forces of deep understanding of the field. [Method/Process] Firstly, based on the literature cocitation network, clustering structures are divided to identify macro topics. Secondly, based on the citation relevance, the cited literature of each clustering structure is selected, and the improved BERTopic topic model is used to identify fine-grained topics and classify cross topic papers into multiple topic categories. Reconstruct indicators of intersectionality, burstness, and novelty to achieve multidimensional features calculation for finegrained topics. Finally, a phased analysis of the intersectionality, burstness, and novelty indicators of each finegrained topic will be conducted to reveal the evolutionary laws of scientific research development. [Result/ Conclusion] Taking the blockchain field as an example for case study, the research show that: (1) the macro topics in the blockchain field are divided into six categories, and the extended citing literature topics are divided into 56 fine-grained topics, of which 7868 cross disciplinary papers are divided into different fine-grained topics; (2) The blockchain field is undergoing significant transformation and expansion, with cross disciplinary themes showing significant stability. The topics of emergence and novelty are changing significantly, and the breakthrough innovative topics with high values in all three indicators are blockchain+artificial intelligence and privacy protection; (3) The changes in the correlation among thematic intersectionality, burstness, and novelty indicators indicate that this field has undergone an evolution from being driven by foundational, paradigm level, and crossborder innovation in the early stages (strong coupling of indicators), to being driven by mid-term application/hype (coupling of burstness and novelty, decoupling from intersectionality), and then to the current diversified, specialized, and rational development (universal decoupling among indicators). [Innovation/Value] The main innovations of this paper can be summarized into the following three aspects:(1) Deep integration of structural and semantic information: Breaking the barriers between structure and semantics, this approach comprehensively utilizes the network structural features of literature (co-citation) and deep semantic representations (pre-trained language models) to construct a more comprehensive and detailed topic identification method, enhancing the richness of topic expression. Simultaneously, this process achieves the mining of research foundations and frontiers, addressing the challenge of assigning multiple topics to interdisciplinary papers. (2) Achieving finegrained multi-type topic identification: By conducting semantic topic mining on citing literature through cocitation clustering, it identifies subtopics; and introduces indicators of intersectionality, burstness, and novelty to distinguish different types of subtopics, forming a hierarchical and structured topic system. (3) Revealing the evolutionary patterns of topic relationships: Tracking the evolution of subtopics and their intersectionality, burstness, and novelty indicators over time, it provides systematic and dynamic insights into the development and progression of knowledge.