Abstract: ［Purpose/Significance］This article intends to demenstrate the progress of foreign structural holes theory application research. ［Design/Methodology］The American scholar Ronald Burt has elaborated the structural holes theory in several ways. One of his papers published in 2004 has been widely used and highly cited, the citation of which mainly comes from business economics, computer science, library and information science and so on. Taking this paper as a seed paper, keywords frequency statistics has been conducted for its citing papers in the field of library and information science；Besides, by using literature research and taking more citing papers from other fields and Ronald Burt’s other related papers into account, this study provides a review on the developing trends of structural holes theory research. ［Findings/Conclusion］The keywords frequency analysis could reveals the emphasis and hotspots of structural holes theory in the library and information area；the developing trends of structural holes theory mainly lies in position advantage of structural holes, the impact of structural holes on innovation, the impact of structural holes on behaviors. ［Originality/Value］Combining with the citing papers, the progress of structural holes theory application research has been presented; Moreover, future research directions regarding to the application of structural holes theory in the field of library and information science has been discussed.

Key words: Structural holes, Position advantage, Application research, Citing papers, Library and information field