The Subject Supportive Structure for Advancing Artificial Intelligence Studies in a University and Its Evolution at the Integration and Differentiation of Subject Knowledge

Abstract

The knowledge in all the references of the publications at a university on a subject constitutes the knowledge support to advance this subject. The subject structure derived from the publications and their references can be used to describe the supportive structure for advancing the studies on this subject. Using AI studies at Tongji University, by mapping cited references of all publications on AI at Tongji University to their corresponding subject categories, we use the co-occurrence of subject categories to construct a subject supportive structure for advancing AI studies. We then analyze the evolution of the supportive structure over five stages: 2004-2007, 2008-2011, 2012-2015, 2016-2019, and 2020-2023. The subject supportive structure has evolved from initial reliance on a limited set of core subjects to a more diversified, balanced, and compact unity. The subjects in the supportive structures are grouped in the clusters of Biomedical Science, Computer Science and Engineering at the beginning. Later, subject categories of the humanities and social sciences joined. In each stage, subject categories began to make new combinations to form different clusters. Based on the commonality of subject categories in the clusters, we construct the top arch structure. It shows that the clusters in subject supportive structures form four big pillars of BIOMEDICINE, ENGINEERING, COMPUTER SCIENCE, and HUMANITIES & SOCIAL SCIENCE. The subject categories are moving in these clusters as well as in these big pillars, which indicates, on the one hand, that AI studies have a special way to integrate knowledge from different subjects and lead these subjects to provide support for advancing AI studies; and on the other hand, subject knowledge has the capacity to integrate with knowledge from different subjects to form different clusters. The administration of a university needs to understand the rationale for organizing the intended development of its subject systems.

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