Visualization of scientific co‐authorship in Spanish universities

Abstract

Purpose -The purpose of this paper is to visualize the inter-university and international collaboration networks generated by Spanish universities based on the co-authorship of scientific articles. Design/methodology/approach -The approach takes the form of formulation based on a bibliometric analysis of Spanish university production from 2000 to 2004 as contained in Web of Science databases, applying social network visualization techniques. The co-authorship data used were extracted with the total counting method from a database containing 100,710 papers. Findings -Spanish inter-university collaboration patterns appear to be influenced by both geographic proximity and administrative and political affiliation. Inter-regional co-authorship encompasses regional sub-networks whose spatial scope conforms rather closely with Spanish geopolitical divisions. Papers involving international collaboration are written primarily with European Union and North and Latin American researchers. Greater visibility is attained with international co-authorship than with any other type of collaboration studied. Research limitations/implications -Impact was measured in terms of journals rather than each individual paper. The co-authorship data were taken from the Web of Knowledge and were not compared with data from other databases. Practical implications -The data obtained in the paper may provide guidance for public policy makers seeking to enhance and intensify the internationalization of scientific production in Spanish universities. Originality/value -The Spanish university system is in the midst of profound structural change. This is the first paper to describe Spanish university collaboration networks using social network visualization techniques, covering an area not previously addressed.

An Exploratory Social Network Analysis of Academic Research Networks

“…For instance, a microanalysis of inter-institutional co-authorship networks comprising universities, government and private companies located in Madrid, Spain, is proposed in [25]. This study was later extended to the rest of Spanish Universities in [21]. Authors concluded that Spanish inter-university collaboration patterns appear to be influenced by both geographic proximity and administrative and political affiliation, which is in line with some other previous studies.…”

“…The application of social network analysis to a coauthorship networks scenario has become increasingly common during the last decade [21]. They share with other social networks global topological properties such as small world-property, long-tail degree distribution and a scaling law for the clustering coefficient [22].…”

Internacionalização da produção científica em Ciências Biológicas da UFRGS: 2000-2011

“…A forte participação dos EUA pode ser associada à proeminência daquele país como zona central da ciência e à liderança exercida no campo científico (Mueller & Oliveira, 2003), embora também indique certa dependência na produção científica. Na perspectiva da internacionalização da ciência, a colaboração com os EUA pode elevar a visibilidade das publicações e ampliar seu impacto na comunidade científica internacional, embora o processo de internacionalização também exija diversificação de parceiros e simetria nas relações de colaboração (Olmeda-Gómez et al, 2009;Sebastián, 2011).…”

How much the shared ocean or lake basins connect the researchers in neighbouring countries?

“…Furthermore, comparative citation frequencies of one data set support the view that collaborative research produces significantly more authoritative research, as being more cited through a longer lifetime (Beaver 2004). Also, the quality of the international articles is much better than of the national papers (Klaić and Klaić 2004;Olmeda-Gómez et al 2009), especially when considering the articles from less developed I. Vilibić (&) Institute of Oceanography and Fisheries, Š etalište I. Meštrovića 63, 21000 Split, Croatia e-mail: vilibic@izor.hr countries (Russel 1998;Bouabib and Martin 2009).…”