Scientific collaboration network on oilseed involved in biodiesel production

Scientific collaboration networks represent strategies for sharing information and new knowledge about academic communities. This type of network can identify the actors that compose the network and the intensity of the connection joining the actors. For this reason, in this work we identified the relationships among authors, countries and institutions in publications about six oilseeds belonging to the biodiesel production chain. The oilseeds selected were soybean, jatropha, palm, canola, sunflower, and castor. In this network, the vertices are authors, countries or institutions and the edges are obtained by the publication analysis. Therefore, if two scientists have coauthored a publication, they are connected. Additionally, the countries and institutions network are built from the authors addresses. Publications about six oilseeds were recover from the Web of Knowledge database from 1945 to 2011. Queries were made in Advanced Search mode, looking for the oilseed name in the publication title and the biodiesel word in the publication title, abstract or keywords. For each oilseed, three networks were constructed: authors, countries, and institutions. In period studied, a total of 1378 publications were analyzed. Four countries (Brazil, India, China, and United States of America) had participated in the publications about all oilseeds studied.