Page 181 - JOURNAL OF LIBRARY SCIENCE IN CHINA 2015 Vol. 41

180 Journal of Library Science in China, Vol. 7, 2015

Yu, Yan, & Ye, 2012). Studies on the dynamic process of an academic innovation diffusing are
still rare. The present study provides a reference not only for colleges and universities to construct
disciplines, organize interdisciplinary research, tackle key problems, select project topics, grasp
subject frontier and trend, but also for scientific research management departments to plan strategy
and policy, evaluate projects and research.
The quantitative study on knowledge diffusion phenomenon increasingly attracts attentions. From
the methodology perspective, the network theory and method are widely applied. The objects to be
measured generally are citation networks composed by journals, papers or patent. Citation network
not only reflects the vertical continuity and succession of scientific knowledge, but also a record of
the transverse cross and infiltration between disciplines. Therefore, the citation network is a natural
entrance of the knowledge diffusion study. Network theory and methods provide the powerful tools
to measure and visualize the process of knowledge diffusion. However, previous researches in this
area are still insufficient in the following aspects: 1) Simulating and modeling the evolution process
of knowledge diffusion used by complex network theory, could simulate and explain the network
structure and dynamics characteristics from the macro level. However, this can only provide
holistic description of knowledge diffusion instead of going deep into the micro level to reveal the
individual behavior. By using the network methods, the individuals in the networks are considered
as homogeneous. However, the heterogeneity of individuals is the prerequisite of diffusion to occur,
and different individuals in the process of knowledge diffusion play different roles. Ignoring the
heterogeneity of individuals may not be able to reveal the essence of knowledge diffusion.
2) Although the empirical studies on the knowledge diffusion using the conventional indicators and
methods of social network analysis considered the nodes in the network as heterogeneous, it can
only describe the static characteristics of knowledge diffusion (Gao, Chen, & Guan, 2013), such as
identifying the core actors in the network, the network grouping results, cohesion measurements,
etc. In this way, they do not reflect the incremental development of knowledge, nor does it identify
the articles that were vital to this development. Therefore, measuring the knowledge diffusion from
the result rather than the process will lose certain important information and cannot accurately
reveal the knowledge diffusion. 3) Previous studies tend to reveal one of the characteristics of
knowledge diffusion only from a certain angle, and basically at the stage of exploring index and
methods. Therefore, they might be unable to grasp the overall and comprehensive measure of
knowledge diffusion, and lack a systematic research paradigm and steps.
In order to overcome the above shortcomings, this study carries out an empirical research focusing
on the dynamic process of knowledge diffusion by using diffusion theory and main path analysis
which concerned with the time dimension. Taking the structural hole theory as an example, we
conduct an empirical study of knowledge diffusion. Structural holes theory was born in Sociology
and widely distributed among various Social Science fields. We draw the diffusion curves to find out
the inflection points, determine the diffusion stages, identify the main path, main path component
and key nodes, measure the diffusion span and the diffusion delay, speed, strength in the different