Journal publications in medicine: ranking vs. interdisciplinarity
Journal publications in medicine: ranking vs. interdisciplinarity
Interdisciplinary research is critical for innovation and addressing complex societal issues. We characterise the interdisciplinary knowledge structure of PubMed research articles in medicine as correlation networks of medical concepts and compare the interdisciplinarity of articles between high-ranking (impactful) and less high-ranking (less impactful) medical journals. We found that impactful medical journals tend to publish research that are less interdisciplinary than less impactful journals. Observing that they bridge distant knowledge clusters in the networks, we find that cancer-related research can be seen as one of the main drivers of interdisciplinarity in medical science. Using signed difference networks, we also investigate the clustering of deviations between high and low impact journal correlation networks. We generally find a mild tendency for strong link differences to be adjacent. Furthermore, we find topic clusters of deviations that shift over time. In contrast, topic clusters in the original networks are static over time and can be seen as the core knowledge structure in medicine. Overall, journals and policymakers should encourage initiatives to accommodate interdisciplinarity within the existing infrastructures to maximise the potential patient benefits from IDR.
Du, Anbang
abc5728b-43bd-47af-920b-2ea6dfae70f2
Head, Michael
67ce0afc-2fc3-47f4-acf2-8794d27ce69c
Brede, Markus
bbd03865-8e0b-4372-b9d7-cd549631f3f7
Du, Anbang
abc5728b-43bd-47af-920b-2ea6dfae70f2
Head, Michael
67ce0afc-2fc3-47f4-acf2-8794d27ce69c
Brede, Markus
bbd03865-8e0b-4372-b9d7-cd549631f3f7
Du, Anbang, Head, Michael and Brede, Markus
(2025)
Journal publications in medicine: ranking vs. interdisciplinarity.
Applied Network Science.
(doi:10.1007/s41109-025-00769-w).
Abstract
Interdisciplinary research is critical for innovation and addressing complex societal issues. We characterise the interdisciplinary knowledge structure of PubMed research articles in medicine as correlation networks of medical concepts and compare the interdisciplinarity of articles between high-ranking (impactful) and less high-ranking (less impactful) medical journals. We found that impactful medical journals tend to publish research that are less interdisciplinary than less impactful journals. Observing that they bridge distant knowledge clusters in the networks, we find that cancer-related research can be seen as one of the main drivers of interdisciplinarity in medical science. Using signed difference networks, we also investigate the clustering of deviations between high and low impact journal correlation networks. We generally find a mild tendency for strong link differences to be adjacent. Furthermore, we find topic clusters of deviations that shift over time. In contrast, topic clusters in the original networks are static over time and can be seen as the core knowledge structure in medicine. Overall, journals and policymakers should encourage initiatives to accommodate interdisciplinarity within the existing infrastructures to maximise the potential patient benefits from IDR.
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Accepted/In Press date: 11 December 2025
e-pub ahead of print date: 18 December 2025
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Local EPrints ID: 508406
URI: http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/id/eprint/508406
PURE UUID: 821cfc67-17b0-4c57-941d-96b16d6ee708
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Date deposited: 20 Jan 2026 18:01
Last modified: 21 Jan 2026 03:03
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Author:
Anbang Du
Author:
Markus Brede
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