Homophily in higher education research: a perspective based on co-authorships

Abstract

Research collaborations are the norm in science today, and are usually evaluated using co-authorships as the unit of analysis. Research collaborations have been typically analyzed using a mapping perspective that focuses on countries, institutions, or individuals, or by assessments of the determinants of research collaboration, i.e., who engages in collaborations and who collaborates the most. One analytical perspective that has been used less frequently is the homophily perspective, which attempts to understand the likelihood of research collaborations based on the similarity of collaborators' preferences and attributes. In addition, compared to studies focused on the fields of the natural and exact sciences, engineering, and the health sciences, research collaborations in the social sciences have been underexamined in the literature, despite the growing numbers of social scientists who engage in such collaborations. This study assessed homophily with respect to geographical, ascribed, acquired and career-related attributes in co-authorships in the social sciences, based on a co-authorship matrix of 913 higher education researchers. The findings showed that geographic and institutional attributes were by far the most powerful homophilic drivers of collaborations, suggesting the importance of physical proximity, national incentives, and shared culture, language, and identity. Another driver was the similarity of acquired attributes, particularly certain preferences regarding research agendas; these absorbed the residual explanatory power that ascribed attributes such as gender or age had in co-authorship preferences. The study is novel in its analysis of the extent to which similarities in the research agendas of researchers predicted coauthorship. The findings indicate the need for further co-authorship homophily analyses around a broader set of acquired attributes and the trajectories that lead to them.

Understanding co‐corresponding authorship: A bibliometric analysis and detailed overview

“…Our analysis reveals that the majority of co‐corresponding authors are from the same country, with only 6.25% of cases involving co‐corresponding authors from different countries. These findings suggest that when one leader seeks collaboration with another, they tend to prioritize researchers from their own country, possibly due to existing familiarity and trust (Batra & Dhir, 2022; Horta et al, 2022; Medina, 2018; Vieira et al, 2022).…”

Homophily and its effects on collaborations and repeated collaborations: a study across scientific fields

“…For example, same-gender researchers are more likely to collaborate than researchers of different genders (González Brambila & Olivares-Vázquez, 2021;Holman & Morandin, 2019). The role of acquired attributes, such as an individual's professional expertise (Hunter & Leahey, 2008), strategic research preferences (Evans et al, 2011), and even personality traits (Horta et al, 2022), is also becoming evident. Geographical and cultural attributes are particularly deserving of attention.…”

“…Despite advances in digital communication, physical proximity continues to significantly influence collaborative choices. Indeed, geographical co-location has been noted as the primary attribute leading to collaboration, stressing the role of homophily in collaborative research processes (Evans et al, 2011;Horta et al, 2022). Institutional and societal identities further amplify this homophilic tendency, shedding light on how deeply entrenched social attributes can sway professional decisions in academia, including those related to collaborative endeavors (Tavares et al, 2022).…”

“…Despite some understanding of the influence of homophily (and heterophily) on research collaborations, there are still at least two known unknowns on the topic. One is the extent to which homophily affects research collaboration in different scientific fields: current studies have only focused on a single scientific discipline or field (Horta et al, 2022) or compared a few disciplines, mostly from the natural sciences (Zeng et al, 2016). The other relates to the effects that homophily may have on established research collaborations, that is, research collaborations that include the same co-authors.…”

The relationship between academics’ strategic research agendas and their preferences for basic research, applied research, or experimental development

“…The studies discussed above provide valuable insights into the question of who adopts specific research focuses in what settings, but an important gap can be identified: the extent to which academics' strategic research agendas (SRAs) 2 relate to individual preferences for basic research, applied research, and experimental development. Understanding the relationship between SRAs and research preferences is important because studies have shown that SRAs are associated with personal attributes, such as gender (Santos et al, 2021), concepts of research , thinking styles , and choice of collaborators (Horta et al, 2021). This means that an academic's SRA is related to research processes, but it is also imbued with the cognitive, judgmental, and decisionmaking traits of the researcher.…”