Assessing main paths by uncovering their coverage with key-node path search

The significant simplification achieved by Main Path Analysis (MPA) to a network of documents raises concerns about whether the derived main paths (MPs) accurately capture and reflect the overall knowledge development within the network. This study addresses this MP representativeness issue from a network-structural perspective, considering that MPs can only represent the parts of the network that are structure-related to them, and these parts of the network are referred to as constituting the MPs' coverage. The share of documents falling within the MPs' coverage can serve as a quantitative measure to complement the qualitative assessment of MP representativeness. This study introduces a so-called key-node path search to uncover the coverage of MPs. In cases where a significant portion of the network falls outside the coverage of MPs, this study proposes a method to discover auxiliary MPs from the out-of-coverage parts of the network. These auxiliary MPs provide additional insights into the representativeness of the primary MPs, the structural characteristics of the network, and additional knowledge development trajectories. To demonstrate the practical application of these concepts and methodologies, a case study using U.S. utility patents related to chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T-cell therapy is conducted.