Bridges over troubled water? Journals, geographers and economists in the field of economy and space 1980-2017

This article analyses the evolution of the field of studies of space and economy (economic geography) between 1980 and 2017. Using a sample of 55 journals from the Web of Science, we study the existing subfields of research, the interaction between communities of geographers and economists and the changing role played by those journals that act as bridges for dialogue between these communities. For this purpose, we analyse the Bibliographic Coupling network of journals in four periods to identify groups of strongly interlinked journals that could represent research communities within the field of economic geography; and we also study the betweenness measure of centrality to identify those journals that have played the role of bridges between disciplines and estimate the level of interdisciplinarity of these journals. Results confirm the increasing complexity and fragmentation of the field of economy and space. We also find that there are spaces for dialogue and pluralism, but they are still peripheral to the core journals of academic communities related to space and economy both in geography and economics, and not yet strong enough to create a distinct academic community.