Structure and Dynamics of Research Collaboration in Computer Science

Abstract

Complex systems exhibit emergent patterns of behavior at different levels of organization. Powerful network analysis methods, developed in physics and social sciences, have been successfully used to tease out patterns that relate to community structure and network dynamics. In this paper, we mine the complex network of collaboration relationships in computer science, and adapt these network analysis methods to study collaboration and interdisciplinary research at the individual, within-area and network-wide levels.We start with a collaboration graph extracted from the DBLP bibliographic database and use extrinsic data to define research areas within computer science. Using topological measures on the collaboration graph, we find significant differences in the behavior of individuals among areas based on their collaboration patterns. We use community structure analysis, betweenness centralization, and longitudinal assortativity as metrics within each area to determine how centralized, integrated, and cohesive they are. Of special interest is how research areas change with time. We longitudinally examine the area overlap and migration patterns of authors, and empirically confirm some computer science folklore.We also examine the degree to which the research areas and their key conferences are interdisciplinary. We find that data mining and software engineering are very interdisciplinary while theory and cryptography are not. Specifically, it appears that CIKM and ICSE attract authors who publish in many areas while FOCS and STOC do not. We also examine isolation both within and between areas. One interesting discovery is that cryptography is highly isolated within the larger computer science community, but densely interconnected within itself.

How healthy are software engineering conferences?

“…This is not surprising since wide-scoped conferences have a larger pool of tentative authors that can contribute to them. This finding is concurrent with the observation that such software engineering conferences as ASE, CAV, FASE, FM, FSE, ICSE, ISSTA are quite interdisciplinary [44].…”

Software engineering research in Brazil from the perspective of young researchers: a panorama of the last decade

“…We also present information regarding the classification of all venues according to the QUALIS system. 7 We observe a tendency to prioritize well-established conferences and journals.…”

“…Bird et al [7] also used DBLP to extract a collaboration graph among researchers in computer science. They applied topology metrics over the extracted graph to identify how centralized, integrated, and cohesive the research areas are.…”

“…5 Former LA-WASP. 6 DBLP Computer Science Bibliography: http://www.informatik.uni-trier.de/~ley/db/ 7 The QUALIS system, managed by CAPES, classifies the most important computer science conferences and journals according to a ranking system consisting of the 7 levels: A1 (higher), A2, B1, B2, B3, B4, and B5 (lower). 8 Only papers published in venues classified by QUALIS system were considered in this analysis.…”

Network of collaboration among PC members of Brazilian computer science conferences

“…More recently, Bird et al [4] have compared different areas of computer science. However, their focus is on the investigation of similarities and differences among these areas (interdisciplinarity, connectivity, size, etc.…”