Bonded-communities in HantaVirus research: a research collaboration network (RCN) analysis

Abstract

Hantavirus, one of the deadliest viruses known to humans, hospitalizes tens of thousands of people each year in Asia, Europe and the Americas. Transmitted by infected rodents and their excreta, Hantavirus are identified as etiologic agents of two main types of diseases-Hemorrhagic fever with renal syndrome and hantavirus pulmonary syndrome, the latter having a fatality rate of above 40 %. Although considerable research for over two decades has been going on in this area, bibliometric studies to gauge the state of research of this field have been rare. An analysis of 2631 articles, extracted from WoS databases on Hantavirus between 1980 and 2014, indicated a progressive increase (R 2 = 0.93) in the number of papers over the years, with the majority of papers being published in the USA and Europe. About 95 % papers were co-authored and the most common arrangement was 4-6 authors per paper. Co-authorship has seen a steady increase (R 2 = 0.57) over the years. We apply research collaboration network analysis to investigate the best-connected authors in the field. The author-based networks have 49 components (connected clump of nodes) with 7373 vertices (authors) and 49,747 edges (co-author associations) between them. The giant component (the largest component) is healthy, occupying 84.19 % or 6208 vertices with 47,117 edges between them. By using edge-weight threshold, we drill down into the network to reveal bonded communities. We find three communities' hotspotsone, led by researchers at University of Helsinki, Finland; a second, led by the Centers of Disease Control and Prevention, USA; and a third, led by Hokkaido University, Japan. Significant correlation was found between author's structural position in the network and research performance, thus further supporting a well-studied phenomenon that centrality effects research productivity. However, it was the PageRank centrality that out-performed degree and betweenness centrality in its strength of correlation with research performance.

Bibliometric Analysis of Articles on Project Management Research

“…In the co-word network structure, the indicators such as degree, betweenness, closeness and modularity are measured (González-Alcaide et al, 2015;Jiandong, 2009). The degree shows the direct connection situation in the co-word network structure, and betweenness represents the capability of bringing communities (Kumar and Markscheffel, 2016). In the keyword co-word network degree, the connection of the specific keyword is represented with the other keywords in the network: more degrees show more connectivity, and it is a positive event.…”

From cut-points to key players in co-authorship networks: a case study in ventilator-associated pneumonia research

“…Other leadership skills were the ability to acquire more information and resources, integrate these into the workflow, and interact with others; personal charisma was also a quality attributed to leaders. In their study, Kumar and Markscheffel (2016) reported that the authors with the highest centrality values were often institutional heads or directors of prominent research programs. They had frequently been awarded or otherwise recognized for their research work and belonged to associations or committees of reference in their research discipline.…”

“…Factors that may influence this phenomenon include closer local or national ties in clinical research (González Alcaide et al 2012) or the tendency of a large part of the scientific community to investigate VAP together with other topics and lines of research. Furthermore, the largest component could be considered the seat of the main activity of a research area (Kumar and Markscheffel 2016), making membership fundamental in terms of scientific performance. Our findings support this hypothesis, both in terms of productivity and in research impact, suggesting the necessity of promoting collaboration through international multicenter studies that involve as many researchers as possible, particularly in areas outside of North American and Europe (Leydesdorff and Wagner 2008).…”