Page 192 - JOURNAL OF LIBRARY SCIENCE IN CHINA 2015 Vol. 41

Ge SONG / The diffusion process of academic innovation 191

Table 4. Interval distribution of traversal weights of papers
Vector values Frequency Freq percentage (%) CumFreq CumFreq percentage (%)

(... 0.000] 0 0.000 0 0 0.000 0
(0.000... 0.125] 386 97.229 2 386 97.229 2

(0.125... 0.250] 6 1.511 3 392 98.740 6
(0.250... 0.375] 3 0.755 7 395 99.496 2
(0.375... 0.500] 0 0.000 0 395 99.496 2

(0.500... 0.625] 0 0.000 0 395 99.496 2
(0.625... 0.750] 1 0.251 9 396 99.748 1

(0.750... 0.875] 0 0.000 0 396 99.748 1
(0.875... 1.000] 1 0.251 9 397 100.000 0

382:Burt00 105:Baum12
0.08 0.02 0.01

398:Burt920.28 394:Burt97 0.07 390:Burt98 354:Burt04 0.09 349:0bstfeld0513 219:Tortoriello10 106:McEvily12
0.25 0.23
0.01
385:Burt00 103:Ahuja12
Figure 4. The diffusion main path of structural holes theory.

Setting 2004 as a separator, the first half of the main path is mainly in the field of Sociology,
while the latter half of it is in the area of Business & Economics. The main path includes 11
literatures (as shown in Table 5). Among them, there are six documents published by Burt, and
concentrated in the first half of the main path. The latter half includes five documents published by
different authors, but all belong to the field of Business Economics. This result that structural holes
theory originated in Sociology and then developed in Business & Economics fits the previous
description.
It can also be seen, Burt not only creates the structural holes theory, but also plays an
important role in the theory diffusion. He continued to conduct research in this field, and
published 12 relevant papers. Six of them led the theory diffusion from 1992 to 2004. Those
six papers applied the structural holes theory in Sociology, Business & Economics, and Social
Sciences with Other Topics. There are two very important citations. One of them is from article
385 to article 382, and both papers were published by Burt in 2000. Another is from article 385
to article 354, and both published in 2004. Their traversal weights are 0.25 and 0.23 respectively,
which are only below the article 398 but far higher than other citations. Article 385 has the
traversal weight of 0.647, which is only lower than article 398. This paper plays an important