Co-authorship networks: Collaborative research structures at the journal level

Abstract

Present-day research is, in most cases, the outcome of collaborative research, as evidenced by the fact that most papers are authored by two or more researchers. This study's general goal was to examine the evolution and structure of scientific collaborative networks revealed by papers published in the Tourism & Management Studies journal over a five-year period, from 2011 to 2015, as well as to represent these networks graphically. In this paper, we seek to offer a clear assessment of intra-institutional, inter-institutional and international collaborations and to identify primary author networks and the role of gender in their composition. To reach these goals, we used a combination of bibliometric analysis with social network analysis. The results demonstrate that geographic proximity and linguistic affinity play a substantial role in scientific collaboration between institutions. In fact, most papers result from collaborative research involving two or more authors from the same institution. A gender analysis of the universe of authors and co-authors and of the role of women in the composition of co-authorship networks demonstrated that most networks include women and that, in most networks, women have a leading position, which is consistent with their weight (51.3%) in the universe of authors. This is one of the first studies to demonstrate that women are taking the lead in tourism and management research.Keywords: co-authorship networks, collaborative research, research networks, bibliometric analysis, journal analysis. ResumoA investigação científica é, na maioria dos casos, atualmente, o resultado de investigação em colaboração, tal como evidenciado pelo fato de a maioria dos artigos serem da autoria de dois ou mais investigadores. O objetivo geral deste estudo é examinar a evolução e a estrutura das redes colaborativas de investigação presentes nos artigos publicados pela revista Tourism & Management Studies durante o período de cinco anos de 2011 a 2015, assim como representá-las graficamente. Neste artigo, procuramos fazer uma avaliação clara das colaborações intrainstitucionais, interinstitucionais e internacionais e identificar as principais redes de autores, assim como o papel do género na sua composição. Para alcançarmos estes objetivos, usámos uma combinação de análise bibliométrica com análise de redes sociais. Os resultados demonstram que a proximidade geográfica e as afinidades linguísticas têm um papel muito importante na colaboração científica entre as instituições. De fato, a maioria dos artigos resultam de investigação colaborativa envolvendo dois ou mais autores da mesma instituição. Uma análise do género no universo de autores e coautores e o papel das mulheres na composição das redes de coautoria comprovou que a maioria das redes inclui mulheres e que na maioria dessas redes as mulheres desempenham um papel de liderança, o que é consistente com o seu peso (51,3%) no universo de autores. Este será um dos primeiros trabalhos a demonstrar que as mulheres estão a assumir um papel de ...

The Co-Authorship and Subject Areas Network in MOOCS’ Scientific Production in Web of Science

“…On the other hand, United States had the highest degree centrality and United Kingdom, France and Australia had made stronger connections among different countries. This was stated in some other literature reviews (Santos & Santos, 2016;Tibana-Herrera et al, 2018).…”

The usefulness of social media analysis within scholarly publications: a study of first-tier tourism journals

“…For an analysis that reveals patterns about large amounts of data, social network models are very useful and promising, although they are little used at the moment. One of the few contributions that have been made using this type of tool indicates that linguistic and geographical proximity facilitates coauthoring, and that women are finally taking a majority role in the overall scientific tourism production (Santos & Santos, 2016).…”

Coauthor Network Analysis of Journal of Agricultural Education Articles from 2008-2017

“…Coauthoring with better-known scholars helps generate more citations for other lesser-known researchers: As Li et al (2013) stated, "to cross the boundary, it is better for a scholar to conduct research in collaboration with other scholars" (p. 1515) to facilitate a flow of shared information, resources, and workloads. Avenues for initial collaborations may be through geographic proximity; locality can play a major role in which institutions and their employees' network (Santos & Santos, 2016;Uddin et al, 2011). As productivity is increased in these collaborative networks as measured by the number of publications released, other benefits also emerge.…”

“…As productivity is increased in these collaborative networks as measured by the number of publications released, other benefits also emerge. Coauthors form a social network that consists of individuals who are known to at least one other individual in the group (Rodway, 2015;Santos & Santos, 2016;Uddin et al, 2011).…”

“…These patterns of collaboration (e.g., the number of papers, the number of collaborators, and the temporal and spatial movement of relationships) are questions of interest because understanding coauthorship networks leads to understanding how research can be outsourced, collaborated on, and made more efficient (Santos & Santos, 2016). Not only in education but across multiple disciplines, studies have examined how collaboration turns into coauthoring and how these projects promote transdisciplinary work.…”