Social network analysis of research collaboration among Filipino agricultural scientists
2009
Pabico, J.P., Philippines Univ. Los Baños, College, Laguna (Philippines). Coll. of Arts and Sciences
A social network is composed of people or groups called 'actors', each of which has some kind of connections called 'ties' to some or all the actors. In this study a network or collaboration between Filipino agricultural scientists was constructed using computer archives of scientific papers in Philippine agriculture spanning the recent 4-year period from 2006 to 2009 involving 235 papers written by 645 authors. In this network, two scientists (actors) were considered connected (have ties) if they had co-authored one or more papers together. Following statistical properties of the network: 1) the Filipino agricultural scientists had written average of 1.39 papers (maximum = 13); 2) the scientific papers had an average of 3.81 authors (maximum = 15); and 3) the Filipino agricultural scientists had collaborated with an average of 2.70 scientists (maximum = 28). To understand the pattern of connection and communication between scientists, computational techniques were utilized from statistical physics and the results were: 1) the maximum and average typical distances between scientists through the network were 12 and 4.89, respectively. Typical distance means the length of a 'referral chain' of intermediate scientists through whom contact may be established. One needed to talk to an average of five scientists to get an audience with another, but needed to talk to at least 12 to guarantee an audience with any. The average value of 4.89 was smaller than the well-known six-degrees of separation among actors in networks exhibiting the small-world characteristics. This means that scientific information would not have to travel far through the network to reach those who could benefit from them. 2) the betweeness centrality of the network was 0.04, suggesting that 4% of the scientists were the most influential in the network acting as information hubs.
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