Research disciplinary interactions on scientific collaboration network in photocatalytic hydrogen evolution: Characteristics and dynamics

Interdisciplinary scientific collaboration promotes the innovative development of scientific research. Photocatalytic hydrogen evolution (PHE) is a typical interdisciplinary subject. This study aims to explore the characteristics of discipline interaction and the temporal evolution in the field. Bibliometric analysis could be used to understand the stage of research in a particular subject. In this work, the publications on the topic in Web of Science (WoS) platform from 1999 to 2020 were selected. On the basis of social network theory, the characteristics of interdisciplinary were revealed from three perspectives. First, the disciplinary interaction network is constructed through disciplinary co-occurrence to detect the characteristics of interaction structure among different disciplines. Then the node centrality index is employed to explore the influence of disciplines in the interactive network by using network centrality analysis. Moreover, the dynamic of discipline interaction evolution is studied using blockmodeling analysis. In the field of PHE, the number of disciplines and the intensity of interaction among different subjects gradually increased in the past 20 years. Chemistry and Material Sciences are the core discipline, and they play an important role in the network. The whole network is divided into different discipline groups. The scale of the discipline group is becoming large, and the disciplinary interaction is becoming more complex. The obtained results are helpful for guiding scholars to carry out interdisciplinary interaction. The methods of detecting interdisciplinary interactive relationship could provide paths for interdisciplinary research in other fields.