Evolutionary dynamics of scientific collaboration networks: multi-levels and cross-time analysis

Several studies exist which use scientific literature for comparing scientific activities (e.g., productivity, and collaboration). In this study, using co-authorship data over the last 40 years, we present the evolutionary dynamics of multi level (i.e., individual, institutional and national) collaboration networks for exploring the emergence of collaborations in the research field of “steel structures”. The collaboration network of scientists in the field has been analyzed using author affiliations extracted from Scopus between 1970 and 2009. We have studied collaboration distribution networks at the micro-, meso- and macro-levels for the 40 years. We compared and analyzed a number of properties of these networks (i.e., density, centrality measures, the giant component and clustering coefficient) for presenting a longitudinal analysis and statistical validation of the evolutionary dynamics of “steel structures” collaboration networks. At all levels, the scientific collaborations network structures were central considering the closeness centralization while betweenness and degree centralization were much lower. In general networks density, connectedness, centralization and clustering coefficient were highest in marco-level and decreasing as the network size grow to the lowest in micro-level. We also find that the average distance between countries about two and institutes five and for authors eight meaning that only about eight steps are necessary to get from one randomly chosen author to another.     

Trend and efficiency analysis of co-authorship network

Although co-authorship in scientific research has a long history the analysis of co-authorship network to explore scientific collaboration among authors is a relatively new research area. Studies of current literature about co-authorship networks mostly give emphasis to understand patterns of scientific collaborations, to capture collaborative statistics, and to propose valid and reliable measures for identifying prominent author(s). However, there is no such study in the literature which conducts a longitudinal analysis of co-authorship networks. Using a dataset that spans over 20 years, this paper attempts to explore efficiency and trend of co-authorship networks. Two scientists are considered connected if they have co-authored a paper, and these types of connections between two scientists eventually constitute co-authorship networks. Co-authorship networks evolve among researchers over time in specific research domains as well as in interdisciplinary research areas. Scientists from diverse research areas and different geographical locations may participate in one specific co-authorship network whereas an individual scientist may belong to different co-authorship networks. In this paper, we study a longitudinal co-authorship network of a specific scientific research area. By applying approaches to analyze longitudinal network data, in addition to known methods and measures of current co-authorship literature, we explore a co-authorship network of a relatively young and emerging research discipline to understand its trend of evolution pattern and proximity of efficiency.     

Identity and publication in non-university settings: academic co-authorship and collaboration

Increased collaboration between researchers working in university, industry, and governmental settings is changing the landscape of academic science. Traditional models of the interaction between these sectors, such as the triple helix concept, draw clear distinctions between academic and non-academic settings and actors. This study surveyed scientists (n = 469) working outside of university settings who published articles indexed in the Web of Science about their modes of collaboration, perceptions about publishing, workplace characteristics, and information sources. We study the association between these variables, and use text analysis to examine the roles, duties, sites, topics, and workplace missions among non-university based authors. Our analysis shows that 72% of authors working in non-university settings who collaborate and publish with other scientists self-identify as academics. Furthermore, their work life resembles that of those working in university settings in that the majority report doing fundamental research in government research organizations and laboratories. Contrary to our initial hypothesis, this research suggests that peer-reviewed publications are much more dominated by non-university academics than we previously thought and that collaboration as co-authors on academic publications is not likely to be a primary conduit for the transfer of scientific knowledge between academe and industry.

     

Assessing scientific collaboration through coauthorship and content sharing

Over the past decade there have been many investigations aimed at defining the role of scientists and research groups in their coauthorship networks. Starting from the assumptions of network analysis, in this work we propose an analytical definition of a collaboration potential between authors of scientific papers based on both coauthorships and content sharing. The collaboration potential can also be considered a useful tool to investigate the relationships between a single scientist and research groups, thus allowing for the identification of characteristic “types” of scientists (integrated, independent, etc.). We computed the collaboration potential for a set of authors belonging to research groups of an institute specialized in the field of Medical Genetics. The methods presented in the paper are rather general as they can be applied to compute a collaboration potential for a network of cooperating actors in every situation in which one can qualify the content of some activities and which of them are in common among the actors of the network.     

Academics’ “ambidextrous behavior” and doctoral science mentoring practices

Although academics (academic scientists) are the vanguards in mentoring doctoral science students, emergent science policies increasingly push academics to venture into industrial science work with industrial scientists. This puts academics in a situation of heightened role strain given that academic life is already exacting in terms of teaching, research, and service. Now, academics have to balance between intrinsic and extrinsic demands. In this paper, we examine how academics’ involvement in academic and in industrial science activities impacts how academic scientists mentor doctoral students. We introduce the idea of academics’ “ambidextrous behavior” and apply it in three scientific activities, namely: (1) formally collaborating in academic and in industrial research projects, (2) informally networking with academic and with industrial scientists, and (3) producing patents and publications. We test the hypothesis that academics, who exhibit ambidextrous behavior, manifest mentoring practices that differ from colleagues who do not exhibit such behavior. We adduce evidence from a face-to-face survey of 104 East Asian chemical science professors, and analyze data using principal component and regression analyses. Our results provide insights on how academics’ involvement in both academic and industrial science activities shapes the way doctoral students are mentored. Our work also exemplifies how the concept of ambidextrous behavior can be applied in examining aspects of scientific apprenticeship in academia at a time when knowledge production increasingly takes place at the intersecting sectors of Etzkowitz’s (Res Policy 27(8):823–833, 1998) Triple Helix science (i.e., academia, government, and industry).     

Internet practice and professional networks in Chilean science: Dependency or progress?

The conventional view depicts scientific communities in the developing world as globally isolated and dependent. Recent studies suggest that individual scientists tend to favor either local or international ties. Yet there are good reasons to believe that both kinds of ties are beneficial for knowledge production. Since they allow for the more efficient management of social networks, Internet technologies are expected to resolve this inverse relationship. They are also expected to decentralize access to resources within developing regions that have traditionally reflected an urban male bias. Elaborating upon science, development and social network perspectives, we examine the impact of the Internet in the Chilean scientific community, addressing the questions ‘to what extent is Internet use and experience associated with the size of foreign and domestic professional networks?’ and ‘are professional network resources equitably distributed across regional and demographical dimensions?’ We offer results from a communication network survey of 337 Chilean researchers working in both academic departments and research institutes. We introduce a new measure, ‘collaboration range’, to indicate the extent to which scientists engage in work with geographically dispersed contacts. Results suggest that larger foreign networks are associated with higher email use and diversity, but local networks are smaller with longer use of the Internet. Diversity of email use is also associated with diverse geographical networks. Moreover, Internet use may be reducing the significance of international meetings for scientific collaboration and networking. Finally, results also show that in the Internet age professional network resources are distributed symmetrically throughout the Chilean scientific community.     

Productivity, impact and publication habits by gender in the area of Materials Science

Summary A comparative analysis of the scientific performance of male and female scientists in the area of Materials Science at the Spanish Council for Scientific Research (CSIC) is presented. Publications of 333 scientists during 1996-2000 are downloaded from the international database Science Citation Index and the national one ICYT. Scientific performance of scientists is studied through different indicators of productivity (number of SCI and ICYT publications), international visibility (average impact factor of publications, percentage of documents in “top journals”) and publication practices (%international publications, signing order of authors in the documents and different collaboration measures). Inter-gender differences in the research performance of scientists are studied. Influence of professional category and age are analysed. Although women are less productive than men, no significant differences in productivity are found within each professional category. However, a different life-cycle of productivity is found for men and woman and the most important inter-gender differences in productivity occur at the ages of 40-59.     

The structure and analysis of nanotechnology co-author and citation networks

Research activities and collaborations in nanoscale science and engineering have major implications for advancing technological frontiers in many fields including medicine, electronics, energy, and communication. The National Nanotechnology Initiative (NNI) promotes efforts to cultivate effective research and collaborations among nano scientists and engineers to accelerate the advancement of nanotechnology and its commercialization. As of August 2008, there have been over 800 products considered to benefit from nanotechnology directly or indirectly. However, today’s accomplishments in nanotechnology cannot be transformed into commercial products without productive collaborations among experts from disparate research areas such as chemistry, physics, math, biology, engineering, manufacturing, environmental sciences, and social sciences. To study the patterns of collaboration, we build and analyze the collaboration network of scientists and engineers who conduct research in nanotechnology. We study the structure of information flow through citation network of papers authored by nano area scientists. We believe that the study of nano area co-author and paper citation networks improve our understanding of patterns and trends of the current research efforts in this field. We construct these networks based on the publication data collected for years ranging 1993 through 2008 from the scientific literature database “Web of Science”. We explore those networks to find out whether they follow power-law degree distributions and/or if they have a signature of hierarchy. We investigate the small-world characteristics and the existence of possible community structures in those networks. We estimate the statistical properties of the networks and interpret their significance with respect to the nano field.     

The scientific impact and partner selection in collaborative research at Korean universities

This study seeks to bridge the gap between scientometrics literature on scientific collaboration and science and technology management literature on partner selection by linking scientists’ collaborator preferences to the marginal advantage in citation impact. The 1981–2010 South Korea NCR (National Citation Report), a subset of the Web of Science that includes 297,658 scholarly articles, was used for this research. We found that, during this period, multi-author scientific articles increasingly dominated single-author articles: multi-university collaboration grew significantly; and the numbers of research publications produced by teams working within a single institution or by a single author diminished. This study also demonstrated that multi-university collaboration produces higher-impact articles when it includes “Research Universities,” that is, top-tier university schools. We also found that elite universities experienced impact degradation of their scientific results when they collaborated with lower-tier institutions, whereas their lower-tier partners gained impact benefits from the collaboration. Finally, our research revealed that Korean universities are unlikely to work with other universities in the same tier. This propensity for cross-tier collaboration can be interpreted as strategic partner selection by lower-tier schools seeking marginal advantage in citation impact.     

Knowledge-based innovation and collaboration: a triple-helix approach in Saudi Arabia

This study analyzed the research productivity of Saudi academics using the triple-helix model. In the analysis, we combined domestic and international collaboration by three sectors—university, industry, and government—according to the model of the triple-helix. This approach produces better results than by simply including international collaboration as fourth sector. According to the analysis, research collaboration in Saudi Arabia which is measured by the triple-helix, was “-” uncertainty (negative T-value) while scientific productivity has been dramatically increasing since the late 2000s. The triple-helix collaboration does not quite differ between domestic collaboration and “domestic and international” collaborations. In our further analysis, we found that technological development was not based on scientific research in Saudi Arabia; rather, the technological development relies on prior technology (patent references). From that point, Saudi Arabia’s current long-term strategic plan to develop a scientific base for a knowledge-based industry is well aligned to the current contexts of Saudi Arabia.     

With whom do researchers collaborate and why?

Although research collaboration has been studied extensively, we still lack understanding regarding the factors stimulating researchers to collaborate with different kinds of research partners including members of the same research center or group, researchers from the same organization, researchers from other academic and non-academic organizations as well as international partners. Here, we provide an explanation of the emergence of diverse collaborative ties. The theoretical framework used for understanding research collaboration couples scientific and technical human capital embodied in the individual with the social organization and cognitive characteristics of the research field. We analyze survey data collected from Slovenian scientists in four scientific disciplines: mathematics; physics; biotechnology; and sociology. The results show that while individual characteristics and resources are among the strongest predictors of collaboration, very different mechanisms underlie collaboration with different kinds of partners. International collaboration is particularly important for the researchers in small national science systems. Collaboration with colleagues from various domestic organizations presents a vehicle for resource mobilization. Within organizations collaboration reflects the elaborated division of labor in the laboratories and high level of competition between different research groups. These results hold practical implications for policymakers interested in promoting quality research.     

Product and process innovation in manufacturing firms: a 30-year bibliometric analysis

In recent decades, internationalization of research activities has increased, as demonstrated by the phenomena of international scientific collaboration and international mobility of researchers. This paper investigates whether the international scientific collaboration is explained by researchers’ motivation as well as their international migration. Using metadata from papers published in Nature and Science from 1989 to 2009, count data estimation was conducted. The results illustrate those researchers’ international migration and motivation, shown by both synergy and difference effects between countries, explain international collaboration. This implies that international co-authorship in recent decades has been based on researchers’ motivation as well as their networking. The positive result for synergy effects also means that pairs of countries with rich research environments tended to have more international collaboration, which may lead to the convergence of qualified research output in advanced scientific countries. Our findings also support the conclusion that researchers move to countries with better research environments, but networks created through international collaboration are not a factor in international migration. The relationship between international mobility and collaboration is confirmed as going in one direction, from mobility to collaboration.     

Effect of collaboration network structure on knowledge creation and technological performance: the case of biotechnology in Canada

Many of the novel ideas that lead to scientific publications or yield technological advances are the result of collaborations among scientists or inventors. Although various aspects of collaboration networks have been examined, the impact of many network characteristics on knowledge creation and innovation production remains unclear due to the inconsistency of the conclusions from various research studies. One such network structure, called small world, has recently attracted much theoretical attention as it has been suggested that it can enhance the information transmission efficiency among the network actors. However, the existing empirical studies have failed to provide consistent results regarding the effect of small-world network properties on network performance in terms of its scientific and technological productivity. In this paper, using the data on 29 years of journal publications and patents in the field of biotechnology in Canada, the network of scientists’ collaboration activities has been constructed based on their co-authorships in scientific articles. Various structural properties of this network have been measured and the relationships between the network structure and knowledge creation, and quantity and quality of technological performance have been examined. We found that the structure of the co-authorship network of Canadian biotechnology scientists has a significant effect on the knowledge and innovation production, but it produced no impact on the quality of patents generated by these scientists.     

Benefit distribution mechanism in the team members’ scientific research collaboration network

Scientific research collaboration networks are well-established research topics, which can be divided into two kinds of research paradigms: (1) The topological features of the whole scientific collaboration networks and the collaboration representations in some given fields. (2) The individual nodes’ characteristics in the collaboration networks and their endorsements in the networks. However, in the above studies, all the nodes’ roles in the scientific collaboration network are the same, all of whom are called collaborators, thus the relationships among all the nodes in the scientific collaboration network are symmetric, and the scientific collaboration network is undirected. Such symmetric roles and relationships in the undirected networks have no incentive effects on the members’ participations and efforts in the team’s scientific research. In this paper, the roles of team members in the scientific research collaborations are defined, including the scientific research pioneers and contributors, their collaboration relationships are considered from the viewpoint of principal-agent theory, and then the directed scientific collaboration network is built. Then the benefit distribution mechanism in the team members’ networked scientific research collaborations is presented, which will encourage the team members with different roles to make their efforts in their scientific research collaborations and improve the quality of scientific research outputs. An example is used to test the above ideas and conclude that the individual member’s real outputs not only lie in his/her real scientific research efforts, but also rest with his/her contributions to other members’ scientific research.     

Important institutions of interinstitutional scientific collaboration networks in materials science

Interinstitutional scientific collaboration plays an important role in knowledge production and scientific development. Together with the increasing scale of scientific collaboration, a few institutions that positively participate in interinstitutional scientific collaboration are important in collaboration networks. However, whether becoming an important institution in collaboration networks could be a contributing factor to research success and how these important institutions collaborate are still indistinct. In this paper, we identified the scientific institutions that possess the highest degree centrality as important institutions of an interinstitutional scientific collaboration network in materials science and examined their collaboration preferences utilizing several network measures. We first visualized the appearance of these important institutions that had the most positive collaborations in the interinstitutional scientific collaboration networks during the period of 2005–2015 and found an obvious scale-free feature in interinstitutional scientific collaboration networks. Then, we measured the advantages of being important in collaboration networks to research performance and found that positive interinstitutional collaborations can always bring both publication advantages and citation advantages. Finally, we identified two collaboration preferences of these important institutions in collaboration networks—one type of important institution represented by the Chinese Academy of Science plays an intermediary role between domestic institutions and foreign institutions with high betweenness centrality and a low clustering coefficient. This type of important institution has better performance in the number of publications. The other type of important institution represented by MIT tends to collaborate with similar institutions that have positive collaborations and possess a larger citation growth rate. Our finding can provide a better understanding of important institutions’ collaboration preferences and have significant reference for government policy and institutional collaboration strategies.     

Quintuple helix structure of Sino-Korean research collaboration in science

The Triple Helix Model has been used for science-mapping in research collaboration since the 1980s. As knowledge-producing activities have rapidly expanded and become interrelated, the triple helix framework is limited in uncovering a broader range of stakeholders and multilateral collaborative activities. In this vein, the present study employs the N-tuple Helix Model as a suitable alternative to analyze the structure of scientific collaboration networks beyond university–industry–government (UIG) relations. The networks of N-tuple Helix relations embedded in Sino-Korean research collaboration are examined in terms of five actors, such as universities, industries, governments, hospitals, and Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs). The results found that the quintuple helical network exists in Sino-Korean research collaboration. While traditional UIG actors play a pivotal role, hospital and NGO sectors emerge as new drivers for knowledge production and innovation. Each sector is significantly associated with the others and plays distinctive roles and functions. The overall findings provide new insight into a possible change in the traditional Triple Helix framework by demonstrating an alternative “five-helix model” of innovation as a new evolving structure and new dynamic of international collaboration in science.     

Publication productivity and collaboration of researchers in South Africa: new empirical evidence

Apart from a few bibliometrical studies the South African scientific system is a scantly researched area and asking for more empirical evidence. This empirical study of academics and researchers (n = 204) from a selected province of South Africa examines the interrelationship between publication productivity and collaboration, and the sectoral differences between higher education institutions and research institutes. The study highlights the specific context of the scientific system in South Africa with its characteristics features of productivity and collaboration and shows how they are structurally facilitated and hindered. Being a prominent contributor to the development of science in Africa the study offers some interesting findings.     

Collaboration in sensor network research: an in-depth longitudinal analysis of assortative mixing patterns

Many investigations of scientific collaboration are based on statistical analyses of large networks constructed from bibliographic repositories. These investigations often rely on a wealth of bibliographic data, but very little or no other information about the individuals in the network, and thus, fail to illustrate the broader social and academic landscape in which collaboration takes place. In this article, we perform an in-depth longitudinal analysis of a relatively small network of scientific collaboration (N = 291) constructed from the bibliographic record of a research centerin the development and application of wireless and sensor network technologies. We perform a preliminary analysis of selected structural properties of the network, computing its range, configuration and topology. We then support our preliminary statistical analysis with an in-depth temporal investigation of the assortative mixing of selected node characteristics, unveiling the researchers’ propensity to collaborate preferentially with others with a similar academic profile. Our qualitative analysis of mixing patterns offers clues as to the nature of the scientific community being modeled in relation to its organizational, disciplinary, institutional, and international arrangements of collaboration.     

Technology and intelligence

The remarkable contributions of science and technology to national intelligence programs are reviewed. Overhead reconnaissance was the most celebrated of these and has been described elsewhere. This paper focuses on the way in which a combination of technical collection systems and scientific analysis contributed decisively to the solution of three important Cold War problems: Soviet ballistic missile programs, the Soviet space program, and Soviet missile defense systems. In doing so, it suggests the similarity of intelligence activities to scientific research. It also notes the long-running collaboration of civilian scientists and engineers with the intelligence community.     

Women in STEM networks: who seeks advice and support from women scientists?

Supporting and advancing women’s science careers continues to be of interest to researchers, scientists, science funders, and universities. Similarly, professional advice and support networks are important to understanding the advancement of scientific careers. This research aims to marry these two lines of research to investigate and compare the ways in which men and women scientists seek advice and support from women in their networks. Using a sample of academic scientists in nonmedical biology, chemistry, computer science, earth and atmospheric sciences, electrical engineering, and physics we assess the extent to which women and men scientists seek advice and support from women in their networks. We find that field of science is the primary predictor for the presence of women in scientists’ advice and support networks. We also find that citizenship, rank, age, and friendship are significantly related to the proportion of women in women’s networks, but are not consistently significantly related to the proportion of women in men’s networks. We conclude with a discussion of the findings and the distinctions between men and women scientists’ advice and support networks.