Citation network analysis for viewpoint plurality assessment of historical corpora: The case of the medieval rabbinic literature.

Citation networks enable analysis of author groups, defining in-group dynamics, and mapping out inter-group relationships. While intellectual diversity and inclusiveness is one of the important principles of modern scholarship, it is intriguing to explore the extent to which these principles apply to historical communities of leaders and intellectuals. This paper introduces a novel methodological framework aimed at assessing the degree of viewpoint plurality and diversity of historical scholarship communities, through an in-depth analysis of the citations used in their literature, which has become possible due to the recently developed advanced computational analysis techniques.