Topic Diffusion Analysis of a Weighted Citation Network in Biomedical Literature

In this study, we propose a framework for detecting topic evolutions in weighted citation networks. Citation networks are important in studying knowledge flows; however, citation network analysis has primarily focused on binary networks in which the individual citation influences of each cited paper in a citing paper are considered identical, even though not all cited papers have a significant influence on the cited publication. Accordingly, it is necessary to build and analyze a citation network comprising scholarly publications that notably impact one another, thus identifying topic evolution in a more precise manner. To measure the strength of citation influence and identify paper topics, we employ a citation influence topic model primarily based on topical inheritance between cited and citing papers. Using scholarly publications in the field of the protein p53 as a case study, we build a citation network, filter it using citation influence values, and examine the diffusion of topics not only in the field but also in the subfields of p53.