He, B; Ding, Y; Ni, CQ. 2011. Mining Enriched Contextual Information of Scientific Collaboration: A Meso Perspective. JASIST 62 (5): 831-845.

[Eugene Garfield]

He, B; Ding, Y; Ni, CQ. 2011. Mining Enriched Contextual Information of 
Scientific Collaboration: A Meso Perspective. JOURNAL OF THE AMERICAN 
SOCIETY FOR INFORMATION SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY 62 (5): 831-845.

Author Full Name(s): He, Bing; Ding, Ying; Ni, Chaoqun
Language: English
Document Type: Article

KeyWords Plus: COAUTHORSHIP NETWORK ANALYSIS; CO-AUTHORSHIP; 
INTERNATIONAL COLLABORATION; SCHOLARLY COMMUNICATION; RESEARCH 
PRODUCTIVITY; MULTIPLE AUTHORSHIP; PRIMARY-CARE; SCIENCE; IMPACT; 
PATTERNS

Abstract: Studying scientific collaboration using coauthorship networks has 
attracted much attention in recent years. How and in what context two 
authors collaborate remain among the major questions. Previous studies, 
however, have focused on either exploring the global topology of coauthorship 
networks (macro perspective) or ranking the impact of individual authors (micro 
perspective). Neither of them has provided information on the context of the 
collaboration between two specific authors, which may potentially imply rich 
socioeconomic, disciplinary, and institutional information on collaboration. 
Different from the macro perspective and micro perspective, this article 
proposes a novel method (meso perspective) to analyze scientific collaboration, 
in which a contextual subgraph is extracted as the unit of analysis. A 
contextual subgraph is defined as a small subgraph of a large-scale 
coauthorship network that captures relationship and context between two 
coauthors. This method is applied to the field of library and information science. 
Topological properties of all the subgraphs in four time spans are investigated, 
including size, average degree, clustering coefficient, and network 
centralization. Results show that contextual subgprahs capture useful 
contextual information on two authors' collaboration.

Addresses: [He, Bing; Ding, Ying; Ni, Chaoqun] Indiana Univ, Sch Lib & Informat 
Sci, Bloomington, IN 47405 USA
Reprint Address: He, B, Indiana Univ, Sch Lib & Informat Sci, Bloomington, IN 
47405 USA.

E-mail Address: binghe at indiana.edu; dingying at indiana.edu; chni at indiana.edu
ISSN: 1532-2882
DOI: 10.1002/asi.21510
URL: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/asi.21510/abstract