Professor Yu-Yang Lu Research Profile

Technology Management faculty member, Lu Yu-yang (Louis), co-introduced a new citation network analysis method to identify the knowledge diffusion trajectory of a target field and have successfully applied to various fields. The methodology has attracted many researchers’ interest and has been implemented in the freeware Pajek in 2015. It is foreseeable that many researchers will learn the method and the impacts will consequently generate.

The new methods called global main path analysis and key-route main path analysis. The global main path identifies the major development path from the global view and can explore the recent research trend. The key-route main path discloses the divergence and convergence phenomena of a theoretical or a technological development. Integrating various main path analyses together, the whole development picture of a target field can be thoroughly investigated.

Recently Lu and research partner further combined the main path analysis and clustering technique to identify the development trajectory through a deeper perspective. Besides the functions accomplished by the main path analysis, the clustering technique can group the citation network into several research clusters. Examining the content of each cluster, the major research themes are identified. Analyzing the growth curves of all the major clusters, the emerging research trend is revealed and is a good reference for future research planning.

Two of Lu’s articles applied the method to Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) literature are included in the list of the ESI Highly Cited Papers and Hot Papers in 2013, 2014, and 2015. It represents that many researchers have read and cited the articles in their publications. These two articles titled “Data envelopment analysis 1978-2010” and “A survey of DEA applications” have been published on Omega (Impact Factor: 4.289) in 2013.