This paper develops a multilayer network approach for exploring the evolution of scientific disciplines, using the case of economics before and after the 2008 global financial crisis as a large-scale empirical testing ground. The units of analysis are journals, linked by social and intellectual relationships. The analysis covers all journals indexed in EconLit across three years (2006, 2012 and 2019). In the most recent year (2019), the dataset includes 909 journals, over 30,000 editorial board members, more than 260,000 authors, 134,000 articles, and nearly 2 million cited references. For each period, we model journals as connected in a four-layer multiplex network: the social relationships are based on shared editors (interlocking editorship) and shared authors (interlocking authorship), while the intellectual ones are based on shared references (bibliographic coupling) and textual similarity between articles. These four layers are integrated using Similarity Network Fusion to produce unified similarity networks from which journal communities are identified. Comparing the field across the three periods reveals a high degree of structural continuity. Although research topics changed after the crisis, the fundamental social and intellectual relationships among journals remained remarkably stable. A major result of the analysis is that editorial networks play the dominant role in shaping hierarchies and legitimize knowledge production within the discipline. Whether this finding holds in other scientific disciplines remains an open question for future research.

翻译：本文构建了一种多层网络方法，以2008年全球金融危机前后经济学领域的演变为大规模实证检验场，探索科学学科的发展轨迹。分析单元为期刊，通过社会关系与知识关系相互联结。研究覆盖了EconLit数据库中三个年份（2006年、2012年和2019年）收录的所有期刊。在最近的年份（2019年），数据集包含909种期刊、超过3万名编委成员、26万余名作者、13.4万篇论文及近200万条引用文献。针对每个时期，我们将期刊建模为四层多重网络中的节点：社会关系基于共享编委（编委互锁）和共享作者（作者互锁），知识关系则基于共享参考文献（文献耦合）和论文间的文本相似性。通过相似性网络融合对这四个层进行整合，生成统一的相似性网络，进而识别期刊社群。跨三个时期的比较揭示了高度的结构连续性。尽管金融危机后研究主题发生了变化，但期刊间基本的社会与知识关系仍保持显著稳定。分析的主要发现是，编委网络在塑造学科等级秩序及知识生产的合法化过程中占据主导地位。该结论是否适用于其他科学领域，仍有待未来研究检验。