What is Latent Association

The field of scientometrics has been looking at the identification of co-authorship through network mapping. Research on this topic focuses on the cooperation of two authors who have published papers together. However, this paper is exploring the latent association of two authors. By ‘latent association’, we mean that the collaboration between two researchers has not yet occurred but might very likely take place in the future. In this paper, we will aim to find out a couple of authors who have never published together and who bear similar academic interests or study similar subjects. We will also show how the concepts of Yuan (Interdependent arising), Kong (Emptiness), Shi (Energy) and Guanxi (Relationship) in Chinese philosophy contribute to understand ‘latent associations’. These four Chinese concepts are the theoretical basis of this paper. By explaining one by one what each concept is about we hope to tackle the two following questions: What do those four concepts exactly tell us? And how are they linked together? Finally, we will look at the empirical case study in scientometrics. We hope to show that this application of Chinese concepts can unravel latent associations between researchers in Database.