Exploring co-citation chains

✍ Scribed by Jan W. Buzydlowski

• Book ID: 102508276
• Publisher: Wiley (John Wiley & Sons)
• Year: 2007
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 36 KB
• Volume: 43
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0044-7870
• DOI: 10.1002/meet.14504301221

✦ Synopsis

Abstract

The game “Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon” is played by naming an actor and then, by thinking of other actors in movies such that a chain of connections can be made, linking the named actor with Kevin Bacon. The number of different movies that are used to link the actor to Bacon indicate the degree with which the two are linked. For example, using John Travolta as the named actor, he appeared in the movie Look Who' s Talking with Kirstie Alley, who was in She' s Having a Baby with Kevin Bacon. So, John Travolta has a Bacon number or degree of two, as connected via Kirstie Alley. (For a more thorough discussion, see (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Six_Degrees_of_Kevin_Bacon). The example is taken from (http://www.geocities.com/theeac/bacon.html)). Based on the above, perhaps another title for this paper could be the “Six Degrees of Sir Francis Bacon,” as it indicates the framework for this paper by relating it to the above technique but placing it in an academic domain through the use of a scholarly bibliographic database. Additionally, the bibliometric technique of author co‐citation analysis (ACA) will be used to help by automating the process of finding the connections.