Informal knowledge constantly transitions into formal domain knowledge in the dynamic knowledge base. This article focuses on an integrative understanding of the knowledge role transition from the perspective of knowledge codification. The transition process is characterized by several dynamics involving a variety of bibliometric entities, such as authors, keywords, institutions, and venues. We thereby designed a series of temporal and cumulative indicators to respectively explore transition possibility ( whether new knowledge could be transitioned into formal knowledge ) and transition pace ( how long it would take ). By analyzing the large-scale metadata of publications that contain informal knowledge and formal knowledge in the PubMed database, we find that multidimensional variables are essential to comprehensively understand knowledge role transition. More significantly, early funding support is more important for improving transition pace; journal impact has a positive correlation with the transition possibility but a negative correlation with transition pace; and weaker knowledge relatedness raises the transition possibility, whereas stronger knowledge relatedness improves the transition pace.

The citation impact of a scientific publication is usually seen as a one-dimensional concept. We introduce a multidimensional framework for characterizing the citation impact of a publication. In addition to the level of citation impact, quantified by the number of citations received by a publication, we also conceptualize and operationalize the depth and breadth and the dependence and independence of the citation impact of a publication. The proposed framework distinguishes between publications that have a deep citation impact, typically in a relatively narrow research area, and publications that have a broad citation impact, probably covering a wider area of research. It also makes a distinction between publications that are strongly dependent on earlier work and publications that make a more independent scientific contribution. We use our multidimensional citation impact framework to report basic descriptive statistics on the citation impact of highly cited publications in all scientific disciplines. In addition, we present a detailed case study focusing on the field of scientometrics. The proposed citation impact framework provides a more in-depth understanding of the citation impact of a publication than a traditional one-dimensional perspective.