Co-authorship trends and collaboration patterns in the Slovenian sociological community

The article deals with some processes generating increases in research collaboration; one of the most characteristic tendencies of modern science. The major empirical focus is the increasing tendency to co-authorship in sociological publications in Slovenia. Bibliometric analyses, based on two joint national research information systems (SICRIS and COBISS), show the amount of coauthored publications in the field of sociology have increased over the last two decades. Blockmodeling of co-authorship networks in sociology has shown that sociologists who are not systematically tied to strongly connected and wellestablished research groups produce the best scientific publications in their field

The stability of co-authorship structures

This article examines the structure of co-authorship networks\u27 stability in time. The goal of the article is to analyse differences in the stability and size of groups of researchers that co-author with each other (core research groups) formed in disciplines from the natural and technical sciences on one hand and the social sciences and humanities on the other. The cores were obtained by a pre-specified blockmodeling procedure assuming a multi-core-semi-periphery-periphery structure. The stability of the obtained cores was measured with the Modified Adjusted Rand Index. The assumed structure was confirmed in all analysed disciplines. The average size of the cores obtained is higher in the second time period and the average core size is greater in the natural and technical sciences than in the social sciences and humanities. There are no differences in average core stability between the natural and technical sciences and the social sciences and humanities. However, if the stability of cores is defined by the splitting of cores and not also by the percentage of researchers who left the cores, the average stability of the cores is higher in disciplines from the scientific fields of Engineering sciences and technologies and Medical sciences than in disciplines of the Humanities, if controlling for the networks\u27 and disciplines\u27 characteristics. The analysis was performed on disciplinary co-authorship networks of Slovenian researchers in two time periods (1991-2000 and 2001-2010)

The evolution of research collaboration within and across disciplines in Italian Academia

In sociology of science much attention is dedicated to the study of scientific networks, especially to co-authorship and citations in publications. Other trends of research have investigated the advantages, limits, performances and difficulties of interdisciplinary research, which is increasingly advocated by the main lines of public research funding. This paper explores the dynamics of interdisciplinary research in Italy over 10 years of scientific collaboration on research projects. Instead of looking at the output of research, i.e. publications, we analyse the original research proposals that have been funded by the Ministry of University and Research for a specific line of funding, the Research Projects of National Interest. In particular, we want to see how much interdisciplinary research has been conducted during the period under analysis and how changes in the overall amount of public funding might have affected disciplinary and interdisciplinary collaboration. We also want to cluster the similarities and differences of the amount of disciplinary and interdisciplinary collaboration across scientific disciplines, and see if it changes over time. Finally, we want to see if interdisciplinary projects receive an increasing share of funding compared to their disciplinary bounded counterparts. Our results indicate that while interdisciplinary research diminishes along the years, potentially responding to the contraction of public funding, research that cut across disciplinary boundaries overall receives more funding than research confined within disciplinary boundaries. Furthermore, the clustering procedure do not indicate clear and stable distinction between disciplines, but similar patterns of disciplinary and interdisciplinary collaboration are shown by discipline with common epistemological frameworks, which share compatible epistemologies of scientific investigations. We conclude by reflecting upon the implications of our findings for research policies and practices and by discussing future research in this area

Blockmodeling of co-authorship networks in library and information science in Argentina : A case study

The paper introduces the use of blockmodeling in the micro-level exploration of the internal structure of coauthorship networks over time. Variations in scientific productivity and researcher or research group visibility were determined by observing authors' role in the core-periphery structure and crossing this information with bibliometric data. Three techniques were applied to represent the structure of collaborative science: (1) blockmodeling; (2) the Kamada-Kawai algorithm based on the similarities in co-authorships present in the documents analysed; (3) bibliometrics to determine output volume, impact and degree of collaboration from the bibliographic data drawn from publications. The results were examined to determine the extent to which the use of these two complementary approaches, in conjunction with bibliometric data, provides greater insight into the structure and characteristics of a given field of scientific endeavour. The paper describes certain features of Pajek software and how the application might be used to study research group composition, structure and dynamics. The approach involves combining bibliometric and social network analysis to explore scientific collaboration networks and monitor individual and group careers from new perspectives. The contributionof the paper is more on methodology than the conclusions drawn from the data. Its description of a small-scale case study is intended as an example for application and can be used in other disciplines. It may be very useful for the appraisal of scientific developmentsFacultad de Humanidades y Ciencias de la Educació

Blockmodeling of co-authorship networks in library and information science in Argentina : A case study

The paper introduces the use of blockmodeling in the micro-level exploration of the internal structure of coauthorship networks over time. Variations in scientific productivity and researcher or research group visibility were determined by observing authors' role in the core-periphery structure and crossing this information with bibliometric data. Three techniques were applied to represent the structure of collaborative science: (1) blockmodeling; (2) the Kamada-Kawai algorithm based on the similarities in co-authorships present in the documents analysed; (3) bibliometrics to determine output volume, impact and degree of collaboration from the bibliographic data drawn from publications. The results were examined to determine the extent to which the use of these two complementary approaches, in conjunction with bibliometric data, provides greater insight into the structure and characteristics of a given field of scientific endeavour. The paper describes certain features of Pajek software and how the application might be used to study research group composition, structure and dynamics. The approach involves combining bibliometric and social network analysis to explore scientific collaboration networks and monitor individual and group careers from new perspectives. The contributionof the paper is more on methodology than the conclusions drawn from the data. Its description of a small-scale case study is intended as an example for application and can be used in other disciplines. It may be very useful for the appraisal of scientific developmentsFacultad de Humanidades y Ciencias de la Educació