Measuring personal networks and their relationship with scientific production

The analysis of social networks has remained a crucial and yet understudied aspect of the efforts to measure Triple Helix linkages. The Triple Helix model aims to explain, among other aspects of knowledge-based societies, ¿the current research system in its social context. This paper develops a novel approach to study the research system from the perspective of the individual, through the analysis of the relationships among researchers, and between them and other social actors. We develop a new set of techniques and show how they can be applied to the study of a specific case (a group of academics within a university department). We analyse their informal social networks and show how a relationship exists between the characteristics of an individual¿s network of social links and his or her research output

Gender and the Social Structure of Collaboration

Previous research demonstrates that individuals’ network positions in their surrounding social structure of relations influence the extent of their output and performance. The unique situation of minority groups complicates the relationship, however, as issues of status, legitimacy, and marginality influence the flow and interpretation of information and resources. While several scholars have addressed differences in male and female networks in the workplace, the association between macro-level work arrangements and the micro-level interaction mechanisms of minority groups is unclear. Greater insight into stratification processes can be gained by studying how organizational forms affect the way men’s and women’s networks are structured in the workplace. In this research I explore how the contrasting contexts of work in hierarchical versus horizontal settings operate at the network level to produce differences in productivity between male and female workers. I examine twenty years of collaborative inventor relations, built from a national sample of life science organizations which include pharmaceutical companies, public research organizations, research one universities, and science-based firms. The results show that men and women scientists demonstrate different network characteristics, but the magnitude and predictive power of these differences vary across work settings. The results have implications for structural influences on sex differences in network relationships, and provide evidence that flatter, more horizontally-distributed organizational forms may provide more advantaging “opportunity structures” for women life scientists as compared with those in the academic science hierarchy and elsewhere.https://pdxscholar.library.pdx.edu/systems_science_seminar_series/1024/thumbnail.jp