Network Structure and Emergent Collaboration in a Research Network

Clusters of associations and even friendships can foster a sharing of ideas that lead to the co-production of scholarly works. This paper studies the emergence of a network of research collaborations within one small academic institution. We study which of these associations are beneficial to research production and what is the relationship to the structural connectivity of the network. The nodes of this social network are 92 researchers at Molde University College in Norway, and the links are their co-author associations that produced 1480 unique scholarly works. The source of data is the ForskDok database of documented research in Norway that contains over 160,000 publications. We examine global network characteristics: the average degree distribution, and the diameter of network collaborations. We study network neighborhood characteristics: a comparison of percentage of collaboration takes place within and between faculties and that which is external to the school. From these findings we discuss the emerging collaboration and conclude whether faculty members that collaborate have higher quantities of publications. Finally, based on our study of this network data, we discuss the meaning of collaborative efforts for researchers and their institutions.