The Visualization Analysis of Academic Papers Based on Knowledge Atlas—A Case Study of Zhejiang Open University ()
1. Introduction
A university’s development orientation and innovation level are reflected in some aspects by the research direction and capacities of scientific research of its teachers. As the country’s largest distance higher education system, Radio and TV university in China has formed a complete set of scientific research system in the area of scientific research for many years, has trained a large number of advanced scientific researchers, also has achieved a lot of high quality research findings, mainly in the form of academic papers.
Zhejiang Radio & TV University (ZJTVU) is a modern distance and open university, characterized by open education as its subject, together with diversified modes of running open universities and coordinated development of various types of education. Taking advantage of modern information technologies and distance education network, by means of a wide range of academic and non-academic continuing education, ZJTVU has set the goal of establishing a lifelong learning system and a learning-oriented society. Laying emphasis on the promotion of teachers’ scientific research ability and quality over the years, ZJTVU has been in the leading place in the output of scientific research in the national radio and television university system.
According to the CNKI statistics of academic papers published in national TV university system by Wei Shunping in China in 2010, ZJTVU tops as the third in China, with the first and second place of Jiangsu TV University & Guangdong TV University respectively [1] .
Once again in April 2016, the author has made the CNKI statistics of academic papers in TV university system, which reveals the top three branches of Jiangsu TV University, ZJTVU, and Guangdong Open University. As a matter of fact, it is now the routine work for the scientific research management of ZJTVU to analyze those published academic papers on a statistical basis, with the purpose to orient the academic research, find out academic group network relationship, and dynamically analyze scientific research [2] .
Recently, citation analysis based on Knowledge atlas and social network analysis is getting more and more general applied [3] [4] . Combining information visualization techniques, graphics and applied mathematics with citation co- occurrence analysis method in metrology, knowledge atlas analysis exhibits the history of development, the academic community relationships, and advanced academic research, as well as the knowledge structure of overall network in document research by using visual maps. Social network analysis research is regarded as the most convincing, concise and explicit empirical research method to analyze social structure, which is fairly potential in educational academic research [5] .
2. Research Process and Method
Selecting CNKI periodical full-text database, the national largest journal full-text database, as the data source, this paper combines the method of content analysis with information visualization, and uses the analysis method based on concurrence matrix knowledge atlas and social network through analyzing the research directions, the academic community relationships, the foreign cooperated relationships, etc. on the academic papers in Zhejiang Open University system in recent 10 years. Meanwhile, according to university’s development orientation, the paper gives some guidance and suggestions on how Zhejiang Open University develop its scientific research orientation in future. Tools used in the research process include BICOMB (bibliography co-occurrence analysis system), CiteSpaceIII (information visualization statistical software), UCINET6 (social network analysis software), and SPSS20.0 (statistical analysis software).
3. Data Statistics and Analysis
3.1. Ratio Statistics of Core Journal Paper
According to statistical source mentioned in this paper, in nearly a decade, a total of 2241 papers, including 192 core journal papers, have been published in ZJTVU. The total number of the published papers, number of core journals papers and core periodical paper ratio of details are shown in Table 1. As we can see, the total number of papers published annually from 2008 to 2016 shows a decreasing trend. Although there is not so much changes to the number of core journals published papers from 2007, but the proportion in the total number of papers is “just on the rise, which means better quality for the paper published by ZJTVU. “Journal of Distance Education”, sponsored by ZJTVU, has enjoyed a steady improvement in journal quality since its promotion to CSSCI source journal in 2007. Since then, there has been a significant decrease of the paper
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Table 1. The total number of papers published in recent years.
published by our own teachers of ZJTVU. Instead, the journal has issued moreand more papers by authors of common colleges and universities, which is similar to the counterparts sponsored by other TV Universities. In that case, the quality of paper by teachers in ZJTVU would be greatly improved.
CiteSpace, a currently widespread literature analysis tool of building network
As we can tell from Figure 2, before 2009, ZJTVU researchers basically paid
close attention to all kinds of research, with priority in distance education andopen education. Since 2010, they has advocated the theory and practice study of educational technology, such as the educational application of MOOCs, flipped classroom, big data applications in education research. There is also a very significant change, that is, a certain percentage of the related research focusing on Open University.
ZJTVU has lay its emphasis on the construction of Open University in recent years, with its theoretical research started as early as in 2010. At present, promoted by related policies of the Ministry of Education, ZJTVU is going all out to speed up the process of construction of Open University, which is not only career pursuits, but also social responsibilities. What ZJTVU needs is to integrate the most advanced educational concept with educational technology, and to serve the construction of a learning society. Figure 3 shows the keyword network relationship focusing on “Open University”.
As shown, what associates with “Open University” focused research includes “talent cultivation”, “social responsibility”, and “lifelong learning”, “open education”, “social education”, “service learning”, “cooperation learning”, “cooperative study”, “social responsibility”, “education modernization”, “hybrid teaching” , “flipped classroom”, “MOOCs”, “SPOC” and “curriculum reform”, “Chinese dream” and so on.
For more intuitive solutions in the research situation, a quotation record line chart has made through CiteSpace software rendering with “Open University” as the core keyword, as shown in Figure 4. Reviewing the construction of Open University, although ZJTVU began it process of research and practice from 10 years ago, it remains little in the number of academic papers published. Therefore, scientific research should keep the step with the transformation and positioning of school development. Furthermore, ZJTVU should also continue to offer guidance to teachers, as to strengthen the research in this field.
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Figure 3. Keyword network relationship focusing on “Open University”.
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Figure 4. Citation history of Open University.
According to the two-dimensional figure multidimensional scaling analysis,
combined with the clustering analysis, ZJTVU’s research in the recent 10 years can be divided into four categories:
Third class is the research on the construction of Open University, which clusters in the research field of lifelong learning, community education and traditional education.
4. Conclusions
The application of citation analysis methods based on knowledge atlas and social network analysis in academic research field has been universally accepted and welcomed by the academia. Combining the analysis methods of paper content with information visualization, together with the analysis methods based on knowledge atlas and social network, this study analyzes research direction of papers issued by ZJTVU in the past decade, and discusses academic community and foreign cooperated relationships. Besides, it also finds out existing problems in current academic research and puts forwards suggestions on academic research according to developmental orientation of ZJTVU.
ZJTVU should continue to strengthen research on the construction of Open University and credit bank. It proposes explicitly in the national plan of the 13th Five-Year that we should promote to share open learning resources, to establish Open University, to develop online education and distance education, as well as to integrate all kinds of digital education resources to service the whole society. At the same time, it is advocated to build system of personal learning account and credits accumulated, to promote continuing education and lifelong learning channels, to develop national qualifications framework, to promote non-acade- mic education learning outcomes, to transfer mutual recognition of credits for professional skill level. Driven by both social demands and national policy, the construction of Open University has become the main solution to transform and develop TV university. In the next few years, the research areas focusing on Open University should be strengthened and encouraged.
On the one hand, lack of research in credit bank field resulted as its lagging scientific research outputs; at the same time, research literature of credit bank has not been published in the journal before. The construction of a lifelong education credits bank is not only a priority of Zhejiang Open University, but also an important construction project in the 13th Five-Year plan of Zhejiang Province Education Department. Construction of Credit bank should gradually reveal its importance from the policies and requirements, from the state to the provinces. Scientific research departments of TV university should properly guide relevant professionals to strengthen academic research in this field.
ZJTVU should further enhance external scientific research cooperation. It is found from institutional cooperation network analysis that most of TV universities’ cooperation is based on systemic internal cooperation, lack of external cooperation. The construction of Open University has put forward clear direction for TV university development, namely broad services to universal education, lifelong education and learning society construction, resulting in the promotion of educational equality. In scientific research, therefore, ZJTVU also needs to strengthen external cooperation with an open mind. By using social resources and drawing lessons from others, ZJTVU will finally improve its scientific research level.