Illuminating the Progress of Research into Inferentialism: A Systematic Analysis of CiteSpace

The goal of this article is to use the scientometrics software CiteSpace as the analysis tool, studying 317 academic documents about inferentialism from 1999 to 2021 collected in the database Web of Science systematically and intuitevely present the development trends and hot topics of inferentialism, hoping to explore new ideas and directions. The procedure includes visualizing and analizing the co-citation networks generated by the 6.1.R.3 version of CiteSpace. The knowledge bases and the research front about inferentialism are identified by analyzing the cited references in the major clusers and the citing articles to the major clusters in citation networks. The landscape view and timeline view of CiteSpace facilitate the comprehension of the interrelationships among clusters and their temporal evolution, thereby offering dependable histographic survey of inferentialism research spanning from theory to practice. Through the utilization of co-keyword network analysis, co-term network analysis, and co-category network analysis, this analytical approach facilitates the comprehension of the interdisciplinary research by identifying various topics and disciplines in compasing the application of inferentialism in education, as well as its relation to logic, metaethics, mathematics, perception and cognition. Through the co-author and collaborating country/region of the study, the question who are the main researchers of a study and which countries/regions are they affiliated with can be answered. It can provide the reference for us to introduce academic resources, carry out cooperation and evaluate academic achievements. All in all, a systematic analysis in CiteSpace is helpful for researchers to capture the salient literature, understand the historical evolution and development trend of inferentialism, and lay a foundation for further research and cooperation according to their interest and specialities.