Loet Leydesdorff, interdisciplinarity, and diversity

Authors

  • Ronald Rousseau University of Antwerp

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.3145/epi.2023.dic.02

Keywords:

Evenness profiles, Diversity, Gini index, Interdisciplinarity, Bibliometrics, Indicators, Science of science, Loet Leydesdorff

Abstract

Diversity, as used in interdisciplinarity studies, has three components: variety, evenness, and dissimilarity. In 2019, Leydesdorff, Wagner, and Bornmann proposed an indicator, denoted DIV*, that independently operationalized these three components and then combined them. Gini evenness is one factor in this formula. An important point is that Leydesdorff and his colleagues rejected so-called dual concepts, i.e. concepts that mix or are influenced by at least two of the three basic components of diversity. A few years ago Chao and Ricotta took a new look at "evenness" and showed that the Gini evenness measure, as well as the Lorenz curve, are dual concepts as they are influenced by variety. For this reason, I propose to replace the Gini evenness measure in DIV* with an evenness measure, actually an evenness profile, that is not influenced by variety. 

Downloads

Download data is not yet available.

References

Abramo, Giovanni; D’Angelo, Ciriaco A.; Zhang, Lin (2018). “A comparison of two approaches for measuring interdisciplinary research output: The disciplinary diversity of authors vs. the disciplinary diversity of the reference list”. Journal of informetrics, v. 12, n. 4, pp. 1182-1193. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.joi.2018.09.001

Chao, Anne; Ricotta, Carlo (2019). “Quantifying evenness and linking it to diversity, beta diversity, and similarity”. Ecology, v. 100, n. 12, pp. article e02852. https://doi.org/10.1002/ecy.2852

Dalton, Hugh (1920). “The measurement of the inequality of incomes”. The economic journal, v. 30, n. 119, pp. 348-361. https://doi.org/10.2307/2223525

Egghe, Leo; Rousseau, Ronald (1990). “Elements of concentration theory”. In: Egghe & Rousseau (eds.). Informetrics 89/90, pp. 97-137. Amsterdam: Elsevier.

Jost, Lou (2009). “Mismeasuring biological diversity: Response to Hoffmann and Hoffmann (2008)”. Ecological economics, v. 68, n. 4, pp. 925-928. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecolecon.2008.10.015

Jost, Lou (2010). “The relation between evenness and diversity”. Diversity, v. 2, pp. 207-232. https://doi.org/10.3390/d2020207

Kvålseth, Tarald O. (1991). “Note on biological diversity, evenness, and homogeneity”. Oikos, v. 62, pp. 123-127. https://doi.org/10.2307/3545460

Leinster, Tom; Cobbold, Christina A. (2012). “Measuring diversity: The importance of species similarity”. Ecology, v. 93, n. 3, pp. 477-489. https://doi.org/10.1890/10-2402.1

Leydesdorff, Loet; Wagner, Caroline S.; Bornmann, Lutz (2019a). “Interdisciplinarity as diversity in citation patterns among journals: Rao-Stirling diversity, relative variety, and the Gini coefficient”. Journal of informetrics, v. 13, n. 3, pp. 255-269. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.joi.2018.12.006

Leydesdorff, Loet; Wagner, Caroline S.; Bornmann, Lutz (2019b). “Diversity measurement: Steps towards the measurement of interdisciplinarity?”. Journal of informetrics, v. 13, n. 3, pp. 904-905. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.joi.2019.03.016

Nijssen, David; Rousseau, Ronald; Van Hecke, Piet (1998). “The Lorenz curve: A graphical representation of evenness”. Coenoses, v. 13, n. 1, pp. 33-38. https://www.jstor.org/stable/43461212

Pratt, Allan D. (1977). “A measure of class concentration in bibliometrics”. Journal of the American Society for Information Science, v. 28, n. 5, pp. 285-292. https://doi.org/10.1002/asi.4630280508

Ràfols, Ismael (2014). “Knowledge integration and diffusion: measures and mapping of diversity and coherence”. In: Measuring scholarly impact. methods and practice. Ding, Ying; Rousseau, Ronald; Wolfram, Dietmar (eds.). Cham: Springer, pp. 169-190. ISBN: 978 3 319 10377 8 https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-10377-8

Ràfols, Ismael; Meyer, Martin (2010). “Diversity and network coherence as indicators of interdisciplinarity: Case studies in bionanoscience”. Scientometrics, v. 82, n. 2, pp. 263-287. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-009-0041-y

Rousseau, Ronald (2018). “The repeat rate: From Hirschman to Stirling”. Scientometrics, v. 116, n. 1, pp. 645-653. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-018-2724-8

Rousseau, Ronald (2019). “On the Leydesdorff-Wagner-Bornmann proposal for diversity measurement”. Journal of informetrics, v. 13, n. 3, pp. 906-907. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.joi.2019.03.015

Rousseau, Ronald; Zhang, Lin; Hu, Xiaojun (2019). “Knowledge integration: its meaning and measurement”. In: Springer handbook of science and technology indicators. W. Glänzel; H. F. Moed; U. Schmoch; M. Thelwall (eds.), pp. 69-94. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-02511-3_3

Stirling, Andy (2007). “A general framework for analysing diversity in science, technology and society”. Journal of the Royal Society Interface, v. 4, n. 15, pp. 707-719. https://doi.org/10.1098/rsif.2007.0213

Taillie, C. (1979). “Species equitability: a comparative approach”. In: Grassle, Patil, Smith & Taillie (eds.). Ecological diversity in theory and practice. Fairland (MD): International Co-operative Publishing House, pp. 51-62. ISBN: 978 0 899740034

Zhang, Lin; Rousseau, Ronald; Glänzel, Wolfgang (2016). “Diversity of references as an indicator for interdisciplinarity of journals: Taking similarity between subject fields into account”. Journal of the Association for Information Science and Technology, v. 67, n. 5, pp. 1257-1265. https://doi.org/10.1002/asi.23487

Published

2023-12-29

How to Cite

Rousseau, R. (2023). Loet Leydesdorff, interdisciplinarity, and diversity. Profesional De La información, 32(7). https://doi.org/10.3145/epi.2023.dic.02