Frontiers in Business, Economics and Management 
ISSN: 2766-824X | Vol. 18, No. 1, 2025 

 

243 

CSSCI literature Research on Cultural Heritage Related 
Topics Based on Knowledge Graph 

Caitian Wu 1, Yongxing Xia 2 and Hongxi Chen 3, * 

1 School of Economics and Management, Quanzhou University of Information Engineering, Quanzhou 36200, China 

2 School of Economics, Fujian Normal University, Fuzhou, 350117, China 
3 Nan’an Branch, Quanzhou Yixing Electrical Engineering Construction Co., Ltd., Quanzhou, 362300, China 

 

Abstract: Cultural heritage is the wealth left by history to mankind, and the protection and inheritance of cultural heritage is 
the necessary meaning for a country to retain its cultural roots and keep the soul of the nation. By using the bibliometric software 

CiteSpace, this paper makes a visual analysis of the knowledge map of CSSCI research literature generation on Chinese cultural 

heritage-related topics since the 21st century, and sorts out and studies its research status and evolution context. Through the 

analysis of keyword clustering, Timeline chart and emergence chart, this paper believes that the current research in the field of 

Chinese cultural heritage is biased towards cultural and tourism integration, rural revitalization, cultural self-confidence and 

digital humanities, and predicts that the development of digital cultural heritage and the related topics of rural revitalization 

enabled by cultural heritage will become the key frontier of future research. 

Keywords: Cultural heritage, CSSCI, Bibliometrics. 

 

1. Introduction 

Cultural heritage refers to the assets left and passed down 

from human ancestors. What is passed on, whether it is called 

inheritance, inheritance, ancestral property (especially in 

patrilineal societies) or primogeniture, together with the 

inheritance relationships and institutions that form the core of 

the study of cultural heritage. [1] The protection and 

inheritance of cultural heritage is the proper meaning for a 

country to retain its cultural roots and the soul of the nation. 

At present, China ranks second in the world in terms of the 

number of world cultural heritage sites, and first in terms of 

the number and scale of intangible cultural heritage protection. 

Remarkable achievements have been made in the protection 

and inheritance of cultural heritage, and research on related 

topics has been continuously promoted and rich scientific 

research results have been obtained. By using bibliometric 

software CiteSpace, this paper displays the knowledge map 

of CSSCI (Chinese Social Sciences Citation Index) on 

cultural heritage-related topics, so as to sort out and study the 

research status and evolution of China's cultural heritage, 

further excavate and predict future research trends, and 

provide certain references for the high-quality development 

of cultural heritage-related topics. 

2. Research Design 

2.1. Research Sample 

The sample literature data selected in this paper are from 

the CNKI database with the widest literature coverage and the 

largest number in China, and the source category is selected 

as CSSCI. The keyword of the search was "cultural heritage", 

and the search time was from January 1, 2000 to January 24, 

2024. Considering the scientific nature and rigor of the 

samples, the search scope was "academic journals", and a 

total of 1845 sample literature data were obtained. 

2.2. Research Tools 

CiteSpace is a commonly used visual bibliometric analysis 

software. It can show the structure, evolution and cooperation 

of a research field by drawing the scientific knowledge map, 

and analyze the research direction and hot spots of the 

literature. Therefore, CiteSpace is selected as a research tool 

in this paper to analyze the frontier fields and research 

hotspots of cultural heritage-related topics. 

2.3. Research Parameters 

In this paper, the obtained sample data was imported into 

CiteSpace6.2.R7W software for analysis, and parameters 

were set: the literature time partition was from January 1, 

2000 to January 24, 2024, and the years per slice was "3"; 

term source selected all by default; node types select author, 

institution, and keyword respectively; the keywords were 

sliced by pathfinder, pruning networks and pruning the 

merged network graph construction algorithm, and the author 

and institutional cooperative network, keyword co-

occurrence, clustering and emergence graphs were obtained. 

The information of frequency, intermediary centrality and 

connection degree of each node is integrated to realize the 

visual analysis of cultural heritage research. 

3. Visual Analysis of Literature 
Related to Cultural Heritage 

3.1. Author Cooperation Network Analysis 

By adjusting the software parameters, this paper obtains the 

visual map of author cooperation in literature related to 

cultural heritage, as shown in Figure 1. The size of the node 

text in the figure indicates the number of publications. The 

larger the text, the more the author has published. The 

thickness of the lines between nodes indicates the closeness 

of the cooperative relationship between the authors, and the 

thicker the lines indicate the greater the intensity of 

cooperation between the authors. 



 

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Figure 1. Author cooperation network diagram 

As shown in Figure 1, in the cooperation network of 

authors on cultural heritage-related topics, there are 12 

authors with more than 4 publications, among which Peng 

Zhaorong and Zhang Ying are the largest, and Feng Huyuan 

and Ma Xiaojun are the most extensive cooperation networks. 

In terms of research content, Peng Zhaorong from Xiamen 

University mainly focuses on homeland heritage, cultural 

park and heritage anthropology, Zhang Ying from Sichuan 

Fine Arts Institute mainly focuses on cultural heritage 

protection and artistic heritage, and Feng Huyuan and Ma 

Xiaojun from Lanzhou University mainly focus on the study 

of Dunhuang mural heritage. It is worth noting that Qi Qingfu 

of Minzu University of China is the most cited author in a 

single paper, "On Inheritance and Inheritors in the Protection 

of Intangible Cultural Heritage"[2]Peng Zhaorong of Xiamen 

University has published 30 relevant papers in this field, 

which shows that he is one of the most influential authors in 

the basic research in this field. 

3.2. Analysis of Institutional Cooperation 
Network 

The map of cooperation network of cultural heritage 

document research institutions is shown in the figure below. 

The size of nodes in Figure 2 indicates the number of 

published papers. The larger the node, the more published 

papers the research institution has. The thickness of the 

connections between nodes indicates the closeness of the 

cooperative relationship between research institutions, and 

the thicker the lines indicate the greater the cooperation 

intensity between institutions.  

 
Figure 2. Number of academic papers published by the institution 

According to the analysis results, a total of 8 institutions 

have published more than 10 papers. Among the eight 

research institutions, the School of Cultural Heritage of 

Northwest University, the Chinese Academy of Cultural 

Heritage, the School of Urban and Environmental Sciences of 

Peking University, and the School of Architecture and Urban 

Planning of Tongji University do not have prominent node 

lines in the figure above. Indicating that there are not many 

cooperative papers between them and the research institutions 

that have made achievements in this field. On the contrary, 

the other four have close cooperation with research 

institutions that have made achievements in this field: The 

Institute of Anthropology of Xiamen University focuses on 

the research of landscape anthropology and homeland 

heritage, and cooperates more with the Art Heritage Research 

Center of Sichuan Fine Arts Institute and the School of 

Literature and Journalism of Sichuan University; The 

Institute of Ethnology and Anthropology of Chinese 

Academy of Social Sciences focuses on the "traditional-

modern" transformation of cultural heritage and the 

integration of culture and tourism, and has close cooperation 

with the School of Ethnology of North University for 

Nationalities; The School of Information Management of 

Wuhan University focuses on the research of cultural heritage 

wisdom data and archive protection, and the School of 

History and Culture of Shandong University focuses on the 

research of the value attributes of cultural heritage. Both of 

them have maintained cooperation and exchanges with the 

School of Information Resource Management of Renmin 

University of China. In general, there is a close relationship 

between the research institutions on the theme of cultural 

heritage literature, and some institutions, as important nodes, 

play a bond role in the cooperation process. 

3.3. Analysis of Hot Topics in Related Research 

Keywords are the words that express the essence of the 

central meaning of the paper, which helps to quickly grasp the 

research theme of the article. Among them, the keywords with 

high frequency and center can clearly show the research 

hotspot in a specific field. This paper uses CiteSpace software 

to carry out co-occurrence (see Figure 3), clustering (see 

Figure 4 and 5) and emergence (see Figure 6) of keywords, 

draw the distribution table of frequency and centrality of 

keywords (see Table 1), analyze the development context and 

frontier topics in the field of cultural heritage research, and 

predict the future development direction. 

3.3.1. Keyword co-occurrence analysis 

 
Figure 3. Keywords clustering diagram 

 

 

 

 



 

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Table 1. Keywords frequency statistics 

Serial 

number 

Frequ

ency 

Centra

lity 

Start 

time 
Keywords 

1 858 1.17 2000 Cultural heritage 

2 92 0.16 2002 Protection 

3 19 0.48 2002 Cultural industry 

4 18 0.11 2006 Heritage Preservation 

5 16 0.07 2012 Digital 

6 15 0.23 2018 Digital Humanities 

7 13 0.07 2005 World heritage site 

8 13 0.13 2006 Legacy 

9 12 0.07 2011 Relics 

10 12 0.15 2009 Cultural heritage 

11 12 0.46 2001 
Preservation of 

heritage 

12 11 0.07 2018 Rural revitalization 

13 11 0.4 2008 Cultural circuit 

14 10 0.38 2007 Travel 

15 10 0.51 2008 Silk Road 

16 9 0 2010 Traditional culture 

17 9 0.02 2009 Ethnic minorities 

18 9 0.03 2003 Natural Heritage 

19 9 0.17 2020 
Cultural and tourism 

integration 

20 9 0.18 2018 cultural confidence. 

Figure 4 shows the map of co-occurrence of key words in 

literature related to cultural heritage. The larger the keyword 

size, the higher the centrality, the larger the node graph, the 

more frequent its occurrence, the darker the color, the more 

recent the research time, and the thicker the line, the stronger 

the correlation between the two. The frequency of "cultural 

heritage" in the literature is the highest, and far exceeds that 

of other keywords, which depends on the retrieval method 

selected in this paper. In addition, the keywords with high 

frequency also include "protection", "cultural industry", 

"heritage protection", "digitalization", "digital humanities", 

"world heritage" and "inheritance". The combination of these 

keywords reflects the wide attention paid to the protection and 

inheritance of cultural heritage, the continuous development 

of cultural industry and the evolving trend of the digital 

development of cultural heritage. 

3.3.2. Keyword cluster analysis 
In this paper, the keywords of related literature are 

clustered, and 12 cluster labels are obtained after adjustment. 

The smaller the label order, the larger the cluster scale and the 

more keywords contained. In order to facilitate the discussion, 

this paper selected the two largest tags outside the cultural 

heritage for analysis, described the evolution order of 

keywords under each cluster, and cited important citations in 

the cluster to sort out the development context of the cluster. 

 

 
Figure 4. Keywords clustering classification map 



 

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Figure 5. Keywords Spatiotemporal evolution graph 

#1 Clustering -- Ancient villages: In China, ancient villages 

are the old name for traditional villages, referring to the 

villages built before the Republic of China. Ancient villages 

contain rich historical information and cultural landscape, 

which is the biggest heritage left by China's farming 

civilization, so it has become the focus of scholars. It can be 

seen from Figure 4 that ancient villages are the second largest 

cluster. From Figure 5, it can be seen that the evolution 

sequence of keywords in this cluster is as follows: urban 

construction -- rural ecology -- ancient villages -- folk beliefs 

-- cultural tourism -- urban Renaissance -- archaeology -- 

modernization, etc. Wang Dong combined Beijing's modern 

urban construction with the protection of ancient cultural 

capital to explore a reasonable path [3] for the development 

of urban modernization; Wang Yuankun regards ancient 

villages as cultural heritage as ecological places formed by 

historical and cultural accumulation, and explores the 

aesthetic cognition[4] of rural ecology; Tian Zhaoyuan and 

other folk beliefs are related to rural-city, and study their 

protection path[5] in the process of urbanization; Over the 

years, scholars have always paid attention to the development 

of cultural tourism in ancient villages and other cultural 

heritage, and closely combined the inheritance, protection, 

innovation and development of cultural heritage with cultural 

tourism. At the same time, the modernization of cultural 

heritage such as urban rejuvenation, archaeology and ancient 

villages has gradually attracted the attention of scholars. 

#2 Clustering -- Cultural relics: Cultural relics are the 

precious historical and cultural heritage of mankind, which 

are the relics of human culture left in society or buried in the 

ground. As shown in Figure 4 and Figure 5, cultural relics are 

the third largest cluster, and the evolution sequence of its 

keywords is: cultural protection - cultural consciousness - 

Confucian culture - cultural memory, etc. The protection of 

cultural heritage is the most important work of cultural 

heritage at present. Many scholars have carried out research 

on the protection, inheritance and utilization of cultural 

heritage. Qi Qingfu regarded inheritance as the core and soul 

[2] of intangible cultural heritage protection through his 

discussion on the inheritance and inheritors of intangible 

cultural heritage protection; By summarizing and analyzing 

the development and evolution of international laws and 

regulations on the protection of cultural heritage in the past 

hundred years, Zhang Chaozhi et al. clarified the relationship 

[6] between international laws and regulations on the 

protection and utilization of cultural heritage. Cao Wobing 

combined cultural heritage, cultural consciousness and 

cultural construction to trace the development process[7] of 

China's cultural heritage; The related research on the 

inheritance and construction of cultural heritage by cultural 

memory such as Confucian culture has also gradually 

developed. 

3.3.3. Keyword emergent analysis 

 
Figure 6. Top keywords with the strongest citation bursts 

As can be seen from Figure 6, the development of literature 

on topics related to cultural heritage can be roughly divided 

into three stages. From 2002 to 2008, research on 

conservation and natural heritage was mainly focused; 2011-

2012 focused on conservation, cultural relics and the 

development of cultural industries; After 2018, it began to pay 

more attention to the research of rural revitalization, cultural 

self-confidence, digital humanities and cultural and tourism 

integration. 

4. Epilogue 

This paper selects literatures related to Chinese cultural 

heritage since the 21st century from CNKI core database as 

research samples, adopts bibliometric method, and uses 

CiteSpace software to conduct research cooperation network 

analysis and keyword co-occurrence, clustering and emergent 

word extraction analysis, reviews the current research 

situation in the field of Chinese cultural heritage, and predicts 

future hot fields. 

Combined with the research results of this paper, and 



 

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compared with the research progress of Chinese cultural 

heritage-related literature, this paper predicts the following 

two hotspots in the field of Chinese cultural heritage-related 

research in the future. 

The first is the development of digital cultural heritage, that 

is, the effective combination of cultural objects and digital 

technology, so as to provide a new path and model for the 

cultural heritage information management system. With the 

widespread application of digital means and methods, digital 

cultural heritage has attracted wide attention due to its 

characteristics of renewable, shareable and reusable. On the 

basis of combining multiple subjects, disciplines, interfaces 

and visions, information recording forms and optimizes the 

multi-dimensional presentation of its contents with the help 

of digital media, which can create a heritage scene that 

combines virtuality and reality, and promote the visualization, 

contextualization and interaction of cultural heritage. Digital 

technology can help the accurate management of cultural 

heritage information. According to the technical requirements 

of multi-scale and multi-level information management, new 

ideas of accurate management of the whole chain of cultural 

heritage can be explored, and multi-participation and dynamic 

interaction of heritage information management system and 

sharing and mutual feed mode can be created, providing new 

possibilities for the iterative advancement of cultural heritage 

protection. 

The second is cultural heritage enables rural revitalization. 

China's comprehensive rural revitalization strategy includes 

the requirements of industrial prosperity, ecological livable 

and rural civilization, all of which are closely linked to the 

protection and utilization of cultural heritage. By cultivating 

and developing new forms of "culture + industry", China will 

integrate rich and colorful cultural forms into handicraft, 

cultural creativity, tourism, Internet live broadcasting, 

construction, service and other industries, so as to enhance the 

connotation of rural industries, enrich the types of cultural 

industries, and lay a solid foundation for enhancing the 

innovation and competitiveness of rural enterprises. Common 

prosperity is an important value pursuit of rural revitalization. 

The economic value of cultural heritage is reflected in its 

great potential in creating jobs, increasing income and 

reducing poverty. The deep integration of cultural heritage 

with rural tourism, traditional handicraft industry and 

emerging Internet marketing methods such as live streaming 

can bring new driving forces and new growth points to rural 

economic and social development, and is the only way to 

achieve prosperity in rural life. 

References 

[1] Peng Zhaorong. Cultural Heritage and Contemporary World [J]. 
Guizhou Social Sciences, 2023(08):85-90. 

[2] Qi Qing-fu. On inheritance and Inheritors in the protection of 
Intangible Cultural Heritage [J]. Northwest Ethnic Studies, 
2006(03):114-123+199. 

[3] Wang Dong. Beijing's modern city construction and Cultural 
ancient capital protection [J]. Beijing Social Sciences, 
2003(01):11-16. 

[4] Wang Yuankun. Aesthetic Cognition of rural ecology [J]. 
Jiangxi Social Sciences, 2008(07):195-198. 

[5] Tian Zhaoyuan. Research on Folk Belief heritage Protection in 
the process of Urbanization [J]. Journal of East China Normal 
University (Philosophy and Social Sciences Edition), 2012, 
44(04):18-22+152-153. 

[6] Zhang Zhaozhi, Zheng Yanfen. Evolution of international rules 
on the relationship between cultural heritage protection and 
utilization [J]. Tourism Forum, 2011, 26(01):81-88. 

[7] Cao Bingwu. Cultural Conscious Cultural Construction of 
Cultural Heritage -- Pursuing the development course of 
China's Cultural heritage [J]. Southeast Culture, 2011(03):7-12.