Reconciling conflicting themes of traditionality and innovation: an application of research networks using author affiliation

Abstract

Innovation takes different forms: varying from path-breaking discoveries to adaptive changes that survive external shifts in the environment. Our paper investigates the nature and process of innovation in the traditional knowledge system of Ayurveda by tracing the footprints that innovation leaves in the academic research network of published papers from the PubMed database. Traditional knowledge systems defy the application of standard measures of innovation such as patents and patent citations. However, the continuity in content of these knowledge systems, which are studied using modern publication standards prescribed by academic journals, indicate a kind of adaptive innovation that we track using an author-affiliation based measure of homophily. Our investigation of this measure and its relationship with currently accepted standards of journal quality clearly shows how systems of knowledge can continue in an unbroken tradition without becoming extinct. Rather than no innovation, traditional knowledge systems evolve by adapting to modern standards of knowledge dissemination without significant alteration in their content.