Studying Scientific Collaboration Part I: Methodology for Investigating Collaboration
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Part 2: Research Papers Collaboration in Action Sponsored by the International Society for Scientometrics and lnformetrics (ISSI) and SIG Metrics
Mari Davis [Convenor and Moderator] Bibliometric & lnformetric Research Group, School of Information Systems, Technology and Management, The University of New South Wales, Sydney 2052 Australia Email:
[email protected]
Henry Small [Keynote Speaker] ISI, Philadelphia and President of ISSI. Email:
[email protected]
Part 1
Part 2
Elie Geisler
Caroline Haythornthwa ite
Stuart Graduate School of Business Illinois Institute of Technology, USA Email:
[email protected]
Graduate School of Library and Information Science University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, USA Email:
[email protected]
Chaomei Chen
Kelly L. Maglaughlin" and Diane H. Sonnenwald**
College of Information Science and Technology Drexel University, USA Email:
[email protected]
Jian Qin and Ji-Hong Park
University of North Carolina*, USA; Gtjteborg University and University College of BorAs**, Sweden Email:
[email protected]
School of Information Studies Syracuse University, Syracuse, NY 13244, USA Email:
[email protected]
Concepcion S. Wilson, Mari Davis, and Linda Marion
Sofia Liberman* and Jane M. Russell** Psychology Faculty* and University Center for Library Research** Universidad Nacional Aut6noma de M6xico Ciudad Universitaria 04510 M6xico DF, Mexico Email:
[email protected]
Blaise Cronin [Commentator] School of Library and Information Science Indiana University, Bloomington IN, USA Email:
[email protected]
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Bibliometric & lnformetric Research Group School of Information Systems, Technology and Management The University of New South Wales, Sydney 2052 Australia Email:
[email protected]
Caroline S. Wagner Amsterdam School of Communications Research University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands Ernail:
[email protected]
Linda Marion [Respondent] Bibliometric & lnformetric Research Group School of Information Systems, Technology and Management The University of New South Wales, Sydney 2052 Australia Email:
[email protected]
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Introduction The goal of the Panel is to explore the nature and role of scientific collaboration from differing perspectives, for example, from scientometrics-inforetrics, sociology of science, and social network analysis. The panel presents two separate but linked sessions with papers describing and advocating new methods and approaches to research design followed by papers that have applied these methods to good effect. Scientific collaboration is frequent and an important aspect of the ongoing development of science. Scientometric methods alone cannot provide the full picture; they must be combined with other approaches particularly when causal mechanisms are to be investigated. To understand the contribution of collaboration, it is crucial to find ways to link data about social networks across fields, organizations and countries with scientometric and bibliometric indicators of collaboration, such as co-authorships, citations, and institutional affiliations. Data relating to differences among disciplines, about the influence of research policies, research support and funding mechanisms for science are important aspects that should be taken into account and linked to scientometric and social indicators. Social relationships among peers and colleagues, the building of social networks within institutions and their staff, also need to be integrated into analyses. To cover this breadth of work, the Panel is divided into two separate sessions. The first includes four papers advocating new methods and approaches to research design with discussion focussed on how far quantitative methods can take us in the exploration of scientific collaboration and on ways of integrating qualitative evidence from the social aspects of collaborative work. The second follows up that discussion by presenting a further four research papers that have used innovative designs and which provide new insights into collaboration from various standpoints. ASIST's overall theme of managing and enhancing conflict and culture is encapsulated in this Panel, with its focus on the culture and ambiguities between disciplines and fields, between quantitative and qualitative approaches, and between individual and institutional factors that drive cooperation as well as competition in research. Participants engaged in research on collaboration, whether in science or other arenas, would learn from this dual session format. First, participants will learn by hearing about the range of methods currently being applied to the study scientific collaboration, and secondly, from discussions on issues related to application of various integrative approaches and of specific methods between panel speakers and members of the audience.
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Part I:Methodology for Investigating CoI la bo ration Methodological Issues and Problems in Investigating Scientific Collaboration (Henry Small, Keynote Speaker) The Metrics of Industry-Government Science and Technology Collaboration (Elie Geisler) The collaboration between public science and technology (S&T) organizations and industrial companies has been the subject of considerable research. Although we now have a good understanding of the process of collaboration and technology transfer between these two types of institutions, we lack a solid and acceptable methodology to measure the outputs and the performance of such collaboration. A consistent problem with the methodology seems to be the lack of adequate quantitative measures that could provide a good assessment of the success of the collaboration. The usual metrics of scientific and technical performance, such as cooperation agreements, bibliometrics and patents provide a partial and sometimes even a biased evaluation of the collaborative effort. This paper explores the current state of metrics used in the evaluation of governmentindustry collaboration, and suggests a method and the metrics to improve the state of this effort. The collaboration and technology transfer or commercialization of the vast network of American public S&T organizations with private industry, are used as an illustration of the proposed metrics. The link to national goals and mission objectives of the S&T organizations is also considered as a force in determining the adequacy of metrics of the collaboration with industry.
From Structural Holes To Intellectual Bridges: Mapping Scientific Collaboration (Chaomei Chen) This paper will focus on the nature of scientific collaboration as structural-hole filling agents in knowledge diffusion and the evolution of scientific collaboration networks, as primarily manifested as co-author networks. Progressive knowledge domain visualization techniques provide one of the promising means 'to improve our understanding of some of the underlying factors that may influence scientific collaboration from this particular perspective. The central hypothesis is drawn upon the social structure of competition in social network research, namely Burt's theory of structural holes. The hypothesis states that the
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greater the structural gap in the knowledge base, the more significant the outcome is likely to be. One can derive a number of auxiliary hypotheses that can be tested with the help of visualizing the progression of temporal patterns in scientific collaboration networks associated with structural holes of high-risk and high-return. The cost of initiating and maintaining scientific collaboration can be measured in many ways, for example, in terms of how far apart the collaborators are geographically, for example, same institution, same town, same country, and whether they are in the same discipline. The effect of scientific collaboration, similarly, can be measured in a wide variety of ways, such as the total number of publications, citations of joint publications, the amount of research grants awarded, the number of patents issued, the number new researchers recruited, and national and international research ranking. Studying scientific collaboration in this way can help us to address both theoretical and methodological issues. Mapping the evolution of various factors involved in scientific collaboration from a structural whole point of view is expected to contribute to the study of scientific collaboration in general. As a potentially widely usable method, an easy understanding and interpreting dynamical properties of structural holes may foster further collaboration.
The Impact of Open Access Journals on Scientific Collaboration: A Methodological Discussion (Jian Qin and Ji-Hong Park) Open access journals are gaining popularity in recent years despite uncertainties in funding for many of them. Currently, there are 702 open access journals according to the Directory of Open Access Journals (http://www.doaj.org),among which 431 (61%) titles are in scientific and engineering disciplines. Advocates strongly believe that open access journals promise a whole new venue for scientific and scholarly communication and will have profound impact on the way scientists communicate and collaborate in research. However, what are the appropriate ways to measure the impact of open access journals? Will the traditional citation data alone be sufficient for such assessment? If not, what other data are needed and how can they be collected? This presentation attempts to address these questions from a methodological perspective. Research collaboration in science has been measured by citation mapping and co-authorship, and the impact of journals by the IS1 JIF. To assess the impact of open access journals on research collaboration would require more than the sum of citation mapping, coauthorship, and journal impact factor. The forms and output of collaborative scientific research in an open access journal environment are no longer limited only to published research papers; scientists communicate and interact via comment areas, author email accessibility, research data and results, and many other channels made available within 2004
open access journal systems. By examining the dimensions and relationships of scientific collaboration and open access journals, the speakers discuss the scientometric and non-scientometric measures for open access journals’ quality and accessibility and the variables for assessing the impact of open access journals on scientific collaboration, the data collection challenges, and the pitfalls in data interpretation.
Task Assignment in Scientific Groups and Its Relationship with Co-Authorship Patterns (Sofia Liberman and Jane M. Russell) Our presentation addresses problems of measuring social processes that underpin scientific collaboration. We start by briefly reviewing the social processes underlying group formation and cohesion as an introduction to our study on the qualitative dimensions of collaboration related to group productivity. Cohesiveness represents the degree of attraction of members to a group and its coherence. Ridgeway (1983) defined it as ‘the extent to which features of the group bind the members to it’. We assume when group size exceeds two that social processes are more complex and that larger groups will have clear demarcation of specialized tasks, with specific tasks within the group. We also assume that no more than two authors are likely to be responsible for intellectual functions associated with the research endeavor while the rest of the team will perform technical and other specific functions. The fact that integration of science groups involves both consensus and cohesion could also lead us to determine the direction of influence within each group, and a clarification of the decisions made with respect to name ordering in published papers. Consensus is the convergence of a set of agreements and commitments between members of a group during interaction resulting in a process of identity transformation. Convergence of agreements and commitments is established by the perception of covariation of different properties, relations and positions from the members of the group, between them and in relation to the group task. (Liberman, 1983). In order to test our assumptions we take Web of Science co-authorship data as our starting point, for the selection of groups of more than two co-authors working at the National University of Mexico (UNAM) in two areas: Physics, and Biotechnology, because, in these disciplines, it is assumed that more specialized tasks are performed by the research group. The members of the selected groups in the present study will be subjected to a semi-structured group interview to clarify the distinct tasks and roles they fulfill within the group. Results will undergo content analysis. Our recent work has established a relationship between coauthorship, as a measure of collaboration in scientific groups, and group cohesiveness in these same groups of scientists. Cohesion was achieved more as a result of the identification of group members with the task assigned to
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the group rather than with the group itself or with the other members. (Lima, Liberman and Russell 2004). The ultimate goal of this research, which falls within the new field of the Social Psychology of Science, is to define the tasks and roles of the different members of scientific groups and relate this to name order of co-authors and to the frequency of their co-authored publications. REFERENCES Liberman, S. (1983) TCcnicas grupales, el TKJ para lograr el consenso. Doctoral Dissertation. Facultad de Psicologfa. Universidad Nacional Aut6noma de Mexico, Mexico DF, Mexico. Lima, M., Libennan, S. and Russell, J.M. (2004) Scientific group cohesiveness. Submitted to Small Group Research. Ridgeway, C. L. (1983) The dynamics of small groups. New York: St. Martin’s.
Part 2: Research Papers -Collaboration in Action Six Case Studies of International Collaboration in Science (Caroline S. Wagner) Six case studies of international cooperation at the subfield level are presented and compared. The cases examine international collaboration by detailing coauthorship links among researchers by field, evidenced at the level of the nation. Cases are offered based on possible drivers for collaboration: sharing theory, cooperating around equipment, cooperating around resources, and sharing data. Scientometric and network analysis of linkages are presented and discussed for each of the six cases: astrophysics, geophysics, mathematical logic, polymers, soil science, and virology. Visualizations of the cosine networks within each field are compared for 1990 and 2000. International collaboration grew in all the fields at rates higher than the international average. The possibility that rapid increases in international collaboration in science can be attributed in part to certain drivers related to access to resources or shared equipment is not upheld by the data. Other possible explanations for the rapid growth of collaboration are offered, including the possibility that weak ties evidenced by geographically remote collaboration can better promote new knowledge creation than side-by-side collaboration.
An Exploration of Interdisciplinary Academic Scientific Collaboration (Kelly L. Maglaughlin and Diane H. Sonnenwald) Interdisciplinary scientific collaborations, that include scientists from two or more disciplines, are increasingly necessary to address complex problems. Furthermore, as
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problems increase in complexity, interdisciplinary collaborations may become increasingly diverse. To encourage and facilitate interdisciplinary collaboration, there is a need to better understand which factors are most critical to its success. This talk will discuss factors that appear to impact academic inter-disciplinary scientific collaboration and the different roles the factors play in inter- and intradisciplinary collaboration. Interviews were conducted with 24 scientists who had extensive experience in both inter- and intra-disciplinary collaboration in academic settings. Analysis of the interview data suggests factors that impact collaboration can be grouped into five categories based on theoretical frameworks proposed by Ranganathan (1 957) and Sonnenwald and Iivonen (1999). The categories are: personality (participants’ abilities, preferences, feelings, perceptions and relationships); matter (the tangible such as physical objects or output, including funding agency support, institutional support; existing publications; opportunities for publication; and students/human resources); energy (action and factors that cause action, including communication and motivations); space/location (where work or communications may take place); and time (period in which the collaboration occurred.) Interview data suggests that these factors are both facilitators and barriers to collaboration, and they have a greater impact on interdisciplinary collaborations than on intradisciplinary collaborations. For example, a majority of the participants indicated that, unlike for intra-disciplinary collaboration, their institutions do not provide fbnding support for interdisciplinary collaboration and institutional practices, such as inter-departmental politics, made interdisciplinary collaboration more difficult than intradisciplinary collaboration. These results may help inform science policy as well as scientific practice and education.
The Collaborative Enterprise of Ophthalmology: Australia and Its National and International Collaborative Partners (Concepcion S. Wilson, Mari Davis, and Linda Marion) Research into factors that influence the growth of scientific knowledge, scientific productivity and scientific collaboration has great relevance for policy makers in higher education and science, for the researchers in the fields investigated, and for assessing the potential of bibliometric / informetric methods. This study continues investigations already completed in the vision sciences domain and more specifically within the field of ophthalmology (Davis & Wilson 2000; 2001a; 2001b; 2003; Davis, Wilson & Hood 1999a; 1999b). In particular, this study will address the following propositions:
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The extent of collaborative papers will increase by some ratio in each subsequent five-year period. That in each of the five-year periods, the number of collaborative authors increases by some ratio. That there will always be a gap between the many national (internal to a country or state) collaborations to the fewer international (external to state or country). The number of papers and authors increases by some proportion, yet each country's overall percentage contribution to world literature hardly shifts. The project will examine time-dependent aspects of science activities as expressed in papers from scholarly research journals on the subject of ophthalmology for the past 30 years (I 974 to 2003). Data for the study come from the IS1 Science Citation Index.
Social Networks of Learning and Knowledge Exchange in Collaborative, Interdisciplinary Teams (Caroline Haythornthwaite) The issue for research collaborators is how to share and/or pool knowledge toward a common goal among people with diverse backgrounds. It is not sufficient to say that exchange must take place; the question is also what kind of exchanges forms the basis for collaborative groups, and with whom. Is there something different about interdisciplinary than intra-disciplinary collaboration? Do needs and exchanges differ by the role of individuals in collaborative teams, e.g., novices and experts, students and senior researchers, principal investigators and team members? Do different teams develop their own patterns of interaction, or is there some commonality across teams? To explore these questions, social network data on work and
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learning activities were collected from members of three interdisciplinary teams. Team members were asked what they learned from the 5-7 others with whom they worked most closely, and what they thought others learned from them. Answers to these questions describe social networks of learning among the interdisciplinary researchers through a mapping of both in-team and out-team interactions with closest sets of co-workers. Qualitative answers to the question of "What sorts of things did you learn from them?" (or "from you") provide a more in-depth look at what kinds of exchanges support collaborative teams. Results show that exchange of factual knowledge, accounting for only one-quarter of exchanges, is only one of a number of learning exchanges that support such teams. Other important exchanges include: learning the process of doing something; information about methods; engaging jointly in research; learning about a technology; generating new ideas; socialization into the profession; access to a network of contacts; administration work; and social support. Knowledge about process and methods figured prominently in what is reported as learned. Examining the networks of learning exchanges reveal patterns of learning exchanges and show how knowledge circulates in the network, and between whom, For example, in one group a triad of theory-simulation-data is evident: theory fiom one team member is used in creating models and computer programs that run simulations by others, while those who run simulations also build ties with those who collect data in order to evaluate the simulations. The data indicate the range and multiplexity of exchanges maintained by individuals, and in particular, give information about the nature and distribution of interactions with other team members as well as with people outside the team. Networks of "typical" team members and/or members with particular roles are shown also by the data.
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