Social Network Analysis: Bibliographic Network Analysis of the Field and its Evolution / Part 1. Basic Statistics and Citation Network Analysis

Abstract

In this paper, we present the results of the study on the development of social network analysis (SNA) discipline and its evolution over time, using the analysis of bibliographic networks. The dataset consists of articles from the Web of Science Clarivate Analytics database and those published in the main journals in the field (70,000+ publications), created by searching for the key word "social network*." From the collected data, we constructed several networks (citation and two-mode, linking publications with authors, keywords and journals). Analyzing the obtained networks, we evaluated the trends in the field`s growth, noted the most cited works, created a list of authors and journals with the largest amount of works, and extracted the most often used keywords in the SNA field. Next, using the Search path count approach, we extracted the main path, key-route paths and link islands in the citation network. Based on the probabilistic flow node values, we identified the most important articles. Our results show that authors from the social sciences, who were most active through the whole history of the field development, experienced the "invasion" of physicists from 2000's. However, starting from the 2010's, a new very active group of animal social network analysis has emerged.