Authors: Marko A. Rodriguez, Alberto Pepe
Title: On the relationship between the structural and socioacademic communities of a coauthorship network.
Abstract: This article presents a study that compares detected structural communities in a coauthorship network to the socioacademic characteristics of the scholars that compose the network. The coauthorship network was created from the bibliographic record of a multi-institution, interdisciplinary research group focused on the study of sensor networks and wireless communication. Four different community detection algorithms were employed to assign a structural community to each scholar in the network: leading eigenvector, walktrap, edge betweenness and spinglass. Socioacademic characteristics were gathered from the scholars and include such information as their academic department, academic affiliation, country of origin, and academic position. A Pearson’s $\chi^2$ test, with a simulated Monte Carlo, revealed that structural communities best represent groupings of individuals working in the same academic department and at the same institution. A generalization of this result suggests that, even in interdisciplinary, multi-institutional research groups, coauthorship is primarily driven by departmental and institutional affiliation.
Venue: Journal of Informetrics. Volume 2, Issue 3, pages 195-201. ISSN: 1751-1577, Elsevier. 2008.
* You can also read the preprint on arXiv.
