A New Approach to Analyzing Patterns of Collaboration in Co-authorship Networks - Mesoscopic Analysis and Interpretation

This paper focuses on methods to study patterns of collaboration in co-authorship networks at the mesoscopic level. We combine qualitative methods (participant interviews) with quantitative methods (network analysis) and demonstrate the application and value of our approach in a case study comparing three research fields in chemistry. A mesoscopic level of analysis means that in addition to the basic analytic unit of the individual researcher as node in a co-author network, we base our analysis on the observed modular structure of co-author networks. We interpret the clustering of authors into groups as bibliometric footprints of the basic collective units of knowledge production in a research specialty. We find two types of coauthor-linking patterns between author clusters that we interpret as representing two different forms of cooperative behavior, transfer-type connections due to career migrations or one-off services rendered, and stronger, dedicated inter-group collaboration. Hence the generic coauthor network of a research specialty can be understood as the overlay of two distinct types of cooperative networks between groups of authors publishing in a research specialty. We show how our analytic approach exposes field specific differences in the social organization of research.Comment: An earlier version of the paper was presented at ISSI 2009, 14-17 July, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Revised version accepted on 2 April 2010 for publication in Scientometrics. Removed part on node-role connectivity profile analysis after finding error in calculation and deciding to postpone analysis

Communities, Knowledge Creation, and Information Diffusion

In this paper, we examine how patterns of scientific collaboration contribute to knowledge creation. Recent studies have shown that scientists can benefit from their position within collaborative networks by being able to receive more information of better quality in a timely fashion, and by presiding over communication between collaborators. Here we focus on the tendency of scientists to cluster into tightly-knit communities, and discuss the implications of this tendency for scientific performance. We begin by reviewing a new method for finding communities, and we then assess its benefits in terms of computation time and accuracy. While communities often serve as a taxonomic scheme to map knowledge domains, they also affect how successfully scientists engage in the creation of new knowledge. By drawing on the longstanding debate on the relative benefits of social cohesion and brokerage, we discuss the conditions that facilitate collaborations among scientists within or across communities. We show that successful scientific production occurs within communities when scientists have cohesive collaborations with others from the same knowledge domain, and across communities when scientists intermediate among otherwise disconnected collaborators from different knowledge domains. We also discuss the implications of communities for information diffusion, and show how traditional epidemiological approaches need to be refined to take knowledge heterogeneity into account and preserve the system's ability to promote creative processes of novel recombinations of idea

Mapping the (In)visible College(s) in the Field of Entrepreneurship

Despite the vitality and dynamism that the field of entrepreneurship has experienced in the last decade, the issue of whether it comprises an effective network of (in)formal communication linkages among the most influential scholars within the area has yet to be examined in depth. This study follows a formal selection procedure to delimit the ‘relational environment’ of the field of entrepreneurship and to analyze the existence and characterization of (in)visible college(s) based on a theoretically well-grounded framework, thus offering a comprehensive and up-to-date empirical analysis of entrepreneurship research. Based on more than a thousand papers published between 2005 and 2010 in seven core entrepreneurship journals and the corresponding (85 thousand) citations, we found that entrepreneurship is an (increasingly) autonomous, legitimate and cohesive (in)visible college, fine tuned through the increasing visibility of certain subject specialties (e.g., family business, innovation, technology and policy). Moreover, the rather dense formal links that characterize the entrepreneurship (in)visible college are accompanied by a reasonably solid network of informal relations maintained and sustained by the mobility of ‘stars’ and highly influential scholars. The limited internationalization of the entrepreneurship community, reflected in the almost total absence of non-English-speaking authors/studies/outlets, stands as a major quest for the field.Invisible College; Entrepreneurship; Bibliometrics

Web archives: the future

T his report is structured first, to engage in some speculative thought about the possible futures of the web as an exercise in prom pting us to think about what we need to do now in order to make sure that we can reliably and fruitfully use archives of the w eb in the future. Next, we turn to considering the methods and tools being used to research the live web, as a pointer to the types of things that can be developed to help unde rstand the archived web. Then , we turn to a series of topics and questions that researchers want or may want to address using the archived web. In this final section, we i dentify some of the challenges individuals, organizations, and international bodies can target to increase our ability to explore these topi cs and answer these quest ions. We end the report with some conclusions based on what we have learned from this exercise

Quality revolutions, solidarity networks, and sustainability innovations: following Fair Trade coffee from Nicaragua to California

Nicaraguan smallholder cooperative leaders working in partnership with a California-based small-scale roasting company pioneered an alternative approach to confronting the post-1999 coffee crisis. They built coffee tasting laboratories and integrated grassroots organizing efforts to create a national smallholder cooperative association that dramatically improved the quality, consistency, and prices from of the coffee they exported. Cooperative leaders used this development project to gain a more significant share of political economic power in a domestic coffee industry historically dominated by colonial powers, and corporate and domestic elites. This alliance between the artisanal small-scale roasting companies and cooperative leaders also proved that smallholders selling into fair trade markets could consistently produce and export high quality coffee. This case study unfolds into Nicaragua\u27s northern mountains, northern California\u27s coastal cities and the commodity trade and solidarity networks that connect them. Beyond following the coffee bean from mountainside farmers, through artisan specialty coffee roasters, and into the hands of Bay Area coffee drinkers, the article recovers the history of political and technological revolutions and the transnational solidarity networks that contributed to sustainability innovations within the coffee value chain. Although the tangible benefits of fair trade coffee to farmers and landscapes have not lived up to the lofty proclamations of its advocates, farmers generally receive higher prices for their coffee and are frequently more secure in their land titles. This political ecology of coffee and solidarity suggests theoretical questions about the role of classic revolutions, and Polanyian double movements in the efforts to practice the alternative values and principles that motivate many of today\u27s sustainability innovations

Social network analysis of scientific articles published by food policy

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Italian sociologists: A community of disconnected groups

Examining coauthorship networks is key to study scientific collaboration patterns and structural characteristics of scientific communities. Here, we studied coauthorship networks of sociologists in Italy, using temporal and multi-level quantitative analysis. By looking at publications indexed in Scopus, we detected research communities among Italian sociologists. We found that Italian sociologists are fractured in many disconnected groups. The giant connected component of the Italian sociology could be split into five main groups with a mixture of three main disciplinary topics: sociology of culture and communication (present in two groups), economic sociology (present in three groups) and general sociology (present in three groups). By applying an exponential random graph model, we found that collaboration ties are mainly driven by the research interests of these groups. Other factors, such as preferential attachment, gender and affiliation homophily are also important, but the effect of gender fades away once other factors are controlled for. Our research shows the advantages of multi-level and temporal network analysis in revealing the complexity of scientific collaboration patterns

Technology, Gender and Organizations: A Systematic Mapping Study

In this article, we employed a systematic mapping methodology to examine the existing literature at the intersection of technology, gender and organizations. While much has been written about gender in organizations, the research has not consistently considered that modern organizations are increasingly technology-driven - in technology may lie an underexplored lever that could help expand our understanding of gender issues at the workplace. By analyzing a final sample of 168 research papers, we found that two main forms of conceptualizing technology emerged: technology as culture and technology as tools. Papers in the first category are concerned with environments in which technology drives a large part of what is produced, and, therefore, heavily influences culture; authors employ this framing to study technology companies, roles, and entire economic sectors under a gender perspective. The second approach corresponds to the understanding of technology as tools that individuals can use to perform their tasks. A tool can be physical, based on software, or even combine hardware, software, procedures and people; authors employ this framing to study gendered use, or adoption, of technologies to work. We synthesized all the extracted data to obtain a mapping of the literature and conclude with suggestions for future research at the intersection of technology, gender and organizations