Thematic interconnections in Information Science at ResearchGate: the case of postgraduate professors in Brazil

It analyzes the thematic interconnectedness in the titles of academic papers in the field of Information Science published in ResearchGate. The methodology used was the social network analysis approach, based on a knowledge representation system - semantic network, to enhance the ways of visualization and representation of scientific information in these environments, based on the Faceted Classification Theory (S.R. Ranganathan) and in Concept Theory (Ingetraut Dahlberg) and associated with the epistemological basis of Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari. We analyzed 324 profiles of teachers from the 18 Graduate Programs in the field of Information Science in Brazil to extract titles from their research. As a result, the semantic network created has topological characterization of small world network, indicating convergence in the interconnection between the concepts that make up the network, which are represented and organized around a central component. It is concluded that the validation experiments of the proposal suggest a continuum in the relationship between concepts, highlighting the interdisciplinarity and evolution of scientific research. A general framework for the application of the analysis of emerging concepts in ResearchGate is created in order to plan the theoretical-methodological path presented for the creation of these networks.