Mapping science using Library of Congress Subject Headings

Maps of scientific knowledge are generally created by analyzing scientific literature including journal articles, conference proceedings, books, and monographs. Although citation analysis is the most popular method for generating maps of science from scientific journal articles and their citations, other relationships between scientific topics can be used to map science. This study offers a map of science generated from examining non-fiction book topics and their relationships as defined by Library of Congress Subject Heading (LCSH) co-assignments. The resulting map reveals which sub-disciplines of science must be learned together, showing that Physics and Mathematics are the central topics required to practice science, which is not revealed by previous studies. This novel LCSH-based science map reveals new relations between the major sub-disciplines of science to produce a more complete representation of scientific domains and how they interact.