Quantitative Characterization of the Research Productivity of Interdisciplinary

Interdisciplinary research has been developed so quickly in recent decades and lots of research productivities have been achieved already. To trance the evolution pathway, reveal the research hotspots and obtain the fronts of interdisciplinary research as well as its development characteristics, informetric methods were employed in this study. From the Web of Science database, papers using in the topic word, like interdisciplinary related words from 1950 to 2012 were listed as the research objects. Some characteristics such as publication language, publication trend, publication contributors and knowledge basement for interdisciplinary were also analysed. Then the raw data was visualized in a number of co-citation maps through the knowledge visualization tool Citespace III to identify critical node documents during the evolutionary history of interdisciplinary research. The research hotspot and research front were carefully analysed using Citespace III's keyword clustering and burst terms detecting function. About ten key articles reflected the evolution pathway of interdisciplinary research, more than two main clusters and top twenty burst terms identified the research hotspots and research fronts. It was also found that research perspective and approach are two mainstreams words of interdisciplinary research. Interdisciplinary related keywords are current research hotpots and represent future directions of interdisciplinary development/research. In addition, interdisciplinary are research areas with some promising prospects.