Abstract: Based on long-term and large-scale academic publication data, this study explored the developmental paths of global social sciences from the perspective of revealed comparative advantage, offering a new theoretical lens for exploring the laws of scientific development and providing a robust scientific basis for strengthening China's academic discourse power in the social sciences. This study applies revealed comparative advantage and product space theories, using data from over 3.8 million SSCI papers published by countries worldwide in the Web of Science database from 2001 to 2022. We quantify the revealed comparative advantage and disciplinary density of global social sciences and empirically examine the development paths of these disciplines. Additionally, we analyze the provincial-level disciplinary distribution of China’s social sciences. The results reveal that global social sciences exhibit inequality, although this inequality has declined over time. Furthermore, the development paths of social sciences align with the principle of revealed comparative advantage. After adjusting for counting rules and controlling for paper quality using article-level citation frequency, journal-level impact factors, and discipline-level h-index, the results remain robust. Moreover, social sciences at the provincial level in China show clear spatial concentration, with dominant disciplines primarily located in the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region, the Yangtze River Delta, the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macau Greater Bay Area, and the Chengdu-Chongqing economic circle. Significant regional differences are observed in the distribution of disciplines with potential revealed comparative advantage.

Key words: Social sciences, Developmental pathway, Academic discourse power, Revealed comparative advantage, Path selection, Disciplinary layout