Anatomy of Complex System Research

Figure 1

The knowledge production and citation networks. (a) The yearly number of publications as a function of time from 1960 to 2018, for the whole Microsoft Academic Graph (green) and the field of complex systems (red) and its related fields (blue). We fit each growth pattern using an exponential function, shown in dashed lines. (b) The fraction of yearly number of papers of complex system relative to the whole MAG, together with a linear fit. Field citation networks in the (c) 1980s, (d) 1990s, and (e) 2000s, with nodes being MAG level-2 fields and links of the citation/reference relationships between two fields. In order to eliminate insignificant links, we applied a backbone extraction method. Different colors represent ancestor fields of these level-2 fields. We also annotate the field of complex system in the citation network.

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