Abstract:

In order to explore the interdisciplinary patterns and the evolution laws of humanities and social sciences in China, the bibliography of papers relating to twentythree disciplines between 1999 and 2009 were downloaded from Chinese Social Sciences Citation Index(CSSCI), including their references and citing articles.Reference Diversity Index(RDI), Selfcitation Index (SCI) and Citation Diversity Index(CDI) were used to measure the degree of interdisciplinarity from the perspectives of knowledge input, knowledge internalization and knowledge output respectively.The interdisciplinary patterns and its evolution laws were identified with Kmeans algorithm. It has been indicated that there are generally four types of interdisciplinary patterns, namely “cohesive pattern”, “convergent pattern”, “balanced pattern” and “open pattern”. Furthermore, two special interdisciplinary patterns which are “skew pattern” and “developmental pattern” have been captured in the analysis over years. Four types of evolution patterns, including “lowsteady mode”, “highsteady mode”, “drastically fluctuating” and “balanced fluctuating” have been discovered as the result of clustering analysis. As an application of interdisciplinary pattern research, this paper finally discussed the significance for discipline construction and development.

Key words: Interdisciplinary research, Interdisciplinary pattern, Interdisciplinary evolution pattern, Humanities and Social Sciences, Cluster analysis