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Here, we develop and publicly release a general pipeline to investigate the scholarly history of the term, analysing <jats:inline-formula><jats:alternatives><jats:tex-math>$425{,}144$<\/jats:tex-math><mml:math xmlns:mml=\"http:\/\/www.w3.org\/1998\/Math\/MathML\">\n                  <mml:mn>425<\/mml:mn>\n                  <mml:mo>,<\/mml:mo>\n                  <mml:mn>144<\/mml:mn>\n                <\/mml:math><\/jats:alternatives><\/jats:inline-formula> academic publications that refer to <jats:italic>(de)centralization<\/jats:italic>. We find that the fraction of papers on the topic has been exponentially increasing since the 1950s. In 2021, 1 author in 154 mentioned <jats:italic>(de)centralization<\/jats:italic> in the title or abstract of an article. Using both semantic information and citation patterns, we cluster papers in fields and characterize the knowledge flows between them. Our analysis reveals that the topic has independently emerged in the different fields, with small cross-disciplinary contamination. Moreover, we show how Blockchain has become the most influential field about 10 years ago, while Governance dominated before the 1990s. In summary, our findings provide a quantitative assessment of the evolution of a key yet elusive concept, which has undergone cycles of rise and fall within different fields. Our pipeline offers a powerful tool to analyze the evolution of any scholarly term in the academic literature, providing insights into the interplay between collective and independent discoveries in science.<\/jats:p>","DOI":"10.1140\/epjds\/s13688-023-00418-1","type":"journal-article","created":{"date-parts":[[2023,10,3]],"date-time":"2023-10-03T08:02:59Z","timestamp":1696320179000},"update-policy":"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1007\/springer_crossmark_policy","source":"Crossref","is-referenced-by-count":2,"title":["The concept of decentralization through time and disciplines: a quantitative exploration"],"prefix":"10.1140","volume":"12","author":[{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0003-2615-0712","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Gabriele","family":"Di Bona","sequence":"first","affiliation":[],"role":[{"role":"author","vocabulary":"crossref"}]},{"given":"Alberto","family":"Bracci","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[],"role":[{"role":"author","vocabulary":"crossref"}]},{"given":"Nicola","family":"Perra","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[],"role":[{"role":"author","vocabulary":"crossref"}]},{"given":"Vito","family":"Latora","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[],"role":[{"role":"author","vocabulary":"crossref"}]},{"given":"Andrea","family":"Baronchelli","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[],"role":[{"role":"author","vocabulary":"crossref"}]}],"member":"297","published-online":{"date-parts":[[2023,10,3]]},"reference":[{"issue":"2","key":"418_CR1","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","first-page":"55","DOI":"10.1080\/00220973.1943.11019391","volume":"66","author":"H London","year":"1975","unstructured":"London H (1975) The meaning of decentralization. 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