Growth and structure of Slovenia's scientific collaboration network

We study the evolution of Slovenia's scientific collaboration network from 1960 till present with a yearly resolution. For each year the network was constructed from publication records of Slovene scientists, whereby two were connected if, up to the given year inclusive, they have coauthored at least one paper together. Starting with no more than 30 scientists with an average of 1.5 collaborators in the year 1960, the network to date consists of 7380 individuals that, on average, have 10.7 collaborators. We show that, in spite of the broad myriad of research fields covered, the networks form "small worlds" and that indeed the average path between any pair of scientists scales logarithmically with size after the largest component becomes large enough. Moreover, we show that the network growth is governed by near-liner preferential attachment, giving rise to a log-normal distribution of collaborators per author, and that the average starting year is roughly inversely proportional to the number of collaborators eventually acquired. Understandably, not all that became active early have till now gathered many collaborators. We also give results for the clustering coefficient and the diameter of the network over time, and compare our conclusions with those reported previously.Comment: 10 pages, 3 figures; accepted for publication in Journal of Informetrics [related work available at http://arxiv.org/abs/1003.1018 and http://www.matjazperc.com/sicris/stats.html

Community structure and the evolution of interdisciplinarity in Slovenia's scientific collaboration network

Interaction among the scientific disciplines is of vital importance in modern science. Focusing on the case of Slovenia, we study the dynamics of interdisciplinary sciences from 1960 to 2010. Our approach relies on quantifying the interdisciplinarity of research communities detected in the coauthorship network of Slovenian scientists over time. Examining the evolution of the community structure, we find that the frequency of interdisciplinary research is only proportional with the overall growth of the network. Although marginal improvements in favor of interdisciplinarity are inferable during the 70s and 80s, the overall trends during the past 20 years are constant and indicative of stalemate. We conclude that the flow of knowledge between different fields of research in Slovenia is in need of further stimulation.Comment: 11 pages, 4 figures; accepted for publication in PLoS ONE [related work available at http://arxiv.org/abs/1004.4824 and http://www.matjazperc.com/sicris/stats.html