Atapuerca: evolution of scientific collaboration in an emergent large-scale research infrastructure

Abstract

We study the evolution of scientific collaboration at Atapuerca's archaeological complex along its emergence as a large-scale research infrastructure (LSRI). Using bibliometric and fieldwork data, we build and analyze co-authorship networks corresponding to the period 1992-2011. The analysis of such structures reveals a stable core of scholars with a long experience in Atapuerca's fieldwork, which would control coauthorship-related information flows, and a tree-like periphery mostly populated by 'external' researchers. Interestingly, this scenario corresponds to the idea of a Equipo de Investigación de Atapuerca, originally envisioned by Atapuerca's first director 30 years ago. These results have important systemic implications, both in terms of resilience of co-authorship structures and of 'oriented' or 'guided' self-organized network growth. Taking into account the scientific relevance of LSRIs, we expect a growing number of quantitative studies addressing collaboration among scholars in this sort of facilities in general and, particularly, emergent phenomena like the Atapuerca case. Keywords Emergent large-scale research infrastructures Á Scientific collaboration dynamics Á Co-authorship Á Network analysis Á Atapuerca Sergi Lozano and Alex Arenas are members of the COMPATHEVOL Research Group.

Does large-scale research infrastructure affect regional knowledge innovation, and how? A case study of the National Supercomputing Center in China

“…The research results reveal the positive significance of this effect to a certain extent, directly confirming the scientific effect or S&T advancement effect of LSRIs mentioned in existing literature (Michalowski 2014;Qiao et al, 2016). Through mechanism testing, the identification of network effect (Lozano et al, 2014;Qiao et al, 2016;D'ippolito and Rüling, 2019;Beck and Charitos, 2021), capability cultivation (Michalowski 2014;Qiao et al, 2016), and clustering effect (Qiao et al, 2016;Beck and Charitos, 2021) is indirectly achieved. While increasing regional scientific financial, human, and material resources, LSRIs also contribute to the embedding of cities in regional innovation networks and the efficiency of utilizing innovation resources.…”

“…Therefore, it is particularly important to scientifically evaluate the knowledge effect produced by LSRIs. Existing research has explored the definition (Michalowski, 2014;Qiao et al, 2016;D'ippolito and Rüling, 2019), type (Qiao et al, 2016), and distribution (Marcelli, 2014) of LSRIs, analyzed the scientific effect that LSRIs possess in theory (Michalowski, 2014;Qiao et al, 2016) and investigated specific infrastructure using scientometrics or case study methods (Lozano et al, 2014;Carrazza et al, 2016;Caliari et al, 2020). However, as some studies have pointed out, there are few systematic evaluating the effect of LSRIs based on a causal inference framework (Bollen et al, 2011), and further efforts are needed to identify the role of LSRIs in innovation growth at the regional level (Caliari et al, 2020;Beck and Charitos, 2021).…”

Co-authorship networks and research impact in large research facilities: benchmarking internal reports and bibliometric databases

“…Moreover, in the past few decades, a new kind of research structure with their related institutions, the so-called large-scale research facilities (LSRFs), has emerged between these two poles. Examples of LSRFs are synchrotron laboratories (or Synchrotron Light Sources-SLS, hereafter) (Hallonsten 2013), astronomical observatories (Trimble 2010), Neutron scattering sources (Lauto and Valentin 2013), and even archaeological complexes (Lozano et al 2014).…”

Research Infrastructures in Europe: The Hype and the Field

“…The first use of the term in the academic literature to denote a category of resources for scientific research of interest to a pan-European community is probably by Papon (2004). The concept has become more frequently used in recent work in research policy studies and research evaluation studies (Lozano et al 2014;Deák and Szabó 2016;Del Bo 2016;Qiao et al 2016;Larsson et al 2018), and in particular RIs for the social sciences have been the topic of some major works (Kleiner et al 2013;Duşa et al 2014). However, none of these provide any definitions other than citing those of policymaking bodies such as ESFRI (above) or similar non-scholarly origins.…”