Visibility of collaboration on the Web

The emerging influence of new information and communication technologies (ICT) on collaboration in science and technology has to be considered. In particular, the question of the extent to which collaboration in science and in technology is visible on the Web needs examining. Thus the purpose of this study is to examine whether broadly similar results would occur if solely Web data was used rather than all available bibliometric co-authorship data. For this purpose a new approach of Web visibility indicators of collaboration is examined. The ensemble of COLLNET members is used to compare co-authorship patterns in traditional bibliometric databases and the network visible on the Web. One of the general empirical results is a high percentage (78%) of all bibliographic multi- authored publications become visible through search of engines in the Web. One of the special studies has shown Web visibility of collaboration is dependent on the type of bibliographic multi-authored papers. The social network analysis (SNA) is applied to comparisons between bibliographic and Web collaboration networks. Structure formation processes in bibliographic and Web networks are studied. The research question posed is to which extent collaboration structures visible in the Web change their shape in the same way as bibliographic collaboration networks over time. A number of special types of changes in bibliographic and Web structures are explained. This revised version was published online in June 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.