Collaboration structures in Slovenian scientific communities

Abstract

We combine two seemingly distinct perspectives regarding the modeling of network dynamics. One perspective is found in the work of physicists and mathematicians who formally introduced the small world model and the mechanism of preferential attachment. The other perspective is sociological and focuses on the process of cumulative advantage and considers the agency of individual actors in a network. We test hypotheses, based on work drawn from these perspectives, regarding the structure and dynamics of scientific collaboration networks. The data we use are for four scientific disciplines in the Slovene system of science. The results deal with the overall topology of these networks and specific processes that generate them. The two perspectives can be joined to mutual benefit. Within this combined approach, the presence of small-world structures was confirmed. However preferential attachment is far more complex than advocates of a single autonomous mechanism claim.

The use of different data sources in the analysis of co-authorship networks and scientific performance

“…Studies focusing on specific scientific communities at country level, such as Italian academic economists (Maggioni and Uberti, 2011) and Slovenian scientists belonging to Physics, Biotechnology, Mathematics and Sociology (Kronegger et al, 2012), show evidence of small-world structure. In addition, for Slovenian scientists, some features of preferential attachment principle have only been confirmed for Mathematics and Sociology.…”

Collaboration experiences across scientific disciplines and cohorts

“…For example, several studies have used bibliographic data from online databases to examine the structures, dynamics, and evolution of research collaboration networks across disciplines Kronegger et al 2012Kronegger et al , 2015Mali et al 2012). While bibliometric analysis is demonstrably useful and important for understanding collaboration, such measures are not always able to capture the full range of social dynamics experienced in research collaboration.…”

Interdisciplinarity of scientific fields and its evolution based on graph of project collaboration and co-authoring

“…We can see that if the border between high and low is set to 0.2, the clustering into four groups is quite balanced. Also, there is no obvious pattern for belonging to a group related to soft/hard, lab/office (Kronegger et al 2012), or natural/technical science subfields types. Evolution of interdisciplinarity Evolution of interdisciplinarity observed by Mali et al (2010) showed that the amount of coauthored publications in the field of sociology increased over the last two decades (1986)(1987)(1988)(1989)(1990)(1991)(1992)(1993)(1994)(1995)(1996)(1997)(1998)(1999)(2000)(2001)(2002)(2003)(2004)(2005).…”