Page 214 - Journal of Library Science in China, Vol.47, 2021

Ronda J. ZHANG & Fred Y. YE / Measuring knowledge hardness for quantifying backbone knowledge 213

The data in Table 4 show that the knowledge hardness of Information Science is greater than that
of Library Science, which aligns with intuitive understanding. The knowledge hardness of Library
and Information Science lies exactly between that of Library Science and Information Science,
which is also consistent with general perception.

4 Discussion and extension

The aforementioned approach can lead to the idea of expanding core knowledge around
formulaic and tabular knowledge, resulting in a Core-Periphery structure of knowledge, as shown
in Figure 1.

Figure 1. The Core-Periphery Construction of Knowledge Expansion

Although after knowing the knowledge hardness calculation formulas (1) or (3), one might be
tempted to artificially increase the number of diagrams to boost the knowledge hardness score,
it is essential to discern whether the diagrams are genuinely needed to reveal the essence of the
knowledge. Only essential diagrams should be considered for the calculations, which can serve as
an anti-fraud criterion.
“Essential diagrams” can be further categorized into “absolutely essential” and “relatively
essential”. For instance, to comprehensively present the biochemical metabolism knowledge
centered around the tricarboxylic acid cycle (TCA cycle, also known as the Krebs cycle), one must
use Figure 2. This is an absolutely essential diagram: