Polar bear science: characterizing relationship patterns and identifying opportunities

Evaluating transdisciplinary research practices: insights from social network analysis

“…There was some redundancy in the network, but if key individuals left, then many ties would be broken resulting in future fragility in the network. Cut-off points pose vulnerabilities and have been observed in other transdisciplinary contexts as well (Stewart et al 2017;Egunyu et al 2018).…”

“…Interestingly, none of the core-periphery indicators indicate community partners as central; this could be influenced by a number of factors, including researcher-specific data contributions to this paper or a structure that did not result in equal power-sharing opportunities for communities. Other network structures in transdisciplinary contexts have been characterized as fragmented (Stewart et al 2017); hierarchical (Egunyu et al 2018), and egalitarian (Hauck et al 2016). More research is needed to tease this out in greater depth, not only in this case, but in SNA more broadly.…”

“…They concluded that collaboration was only moderately increased even though network membership had doubled, and that top contributors focused on recurring collaborations instead of expanding into new partnerships. In their analysis of the publications of polar bear researchers and partners over a 40-year period, Egunyu et al (2018) demonstrated that among the 245 social and natural scientists, 10 researchers (7 natural, 3 social scientists) were vital to the non-fragmentation of the network (i.e., they are cutoff points). The network density was 0.021, and betweenness centrality scores of the 10 cut-off points ranged from 1029.893 to 17,799.443.…”