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
