TITLE:
Who Is Collaborating with Whom in Science? Explanation of a Fundamental Principle
AUTHORS:
Hildrun Kretschmer, Theo Kretschmer
KEYWORDS:
Social Network Analysis (SNA); Collaboration; Co-Authorship; Mathematical Model
JOURNAL NAME:
Social Networking,
Vol.2 No.3,
July
4,
2013
ABSTRACT: Since many decades power functions are well-known in counting single scientists or co-author pairs in social networks. However, in this paper a developed procedure for visualizing a bivariate distribution of co-author pairs’ frequencies hence producing three-dimensional graphs is presented. This distribution is explained by a fundamental principle of social group formation and described by a mathematical model. This model is applied to 52 co-authorship networks. For 96% of them the squared multiple R is larger than 0.98 and for 77% of the 52 networks even larger than 0.99. The visualized social Gestalts in form of three-dimensional graphs are rather identically with the corresponding empirical distributions. Question: Can we expect a general validity of this mathematical model for co-authorship networks?