Main path analysis is a bibliometric method that traces the most significant paths in a citation network and is commonly used to trace the development of a science or technology field.
The basic assumption behind the main path analysis is that when a document B cites document A, a piece of knowledge or information is flowed from A to B and that the significance of this knowledge flow can be found from the network structure. Based on the significance of each flow, main path analysis is able to find the main trajectory of the knowledge flow. Assuming that knowledge flow paths are roads of different width on the ground the analysis provides a satellite view to a given citation network. Under such a view, only the most significant paths are visible and paths of lesser significance disappear.
The MainPath program does the main path analysis and finds the main paths of a science or technology field from a given data set. The main path analysis operates in two steps. The first step obtains the traversal count of each citation link in a citation network. The second step searches for main path by linking the significant citation links according to the size of traversal counts. Traversal counts are the number of traversal for a citation link under a given knowledge flow scenario. Several scenarios and the associated algorithm such as SPC, SPLC, SPNP, SPAD, SPGD etc. are defined and discussed in the following chapters. We will use SPX as a general name of these algorithms.