Skip to main content
Log in

Selection in scientific networks

  • Original Article
  • Published:
Social Network Analysis and Mining Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

One of the most pressing and interesting actual scientific challenges deals with the analysis and the understanding of complex network dynamics. In particular, a major trend is the definition of new frameworks for the analysis, the exploration and the detection of the dynamics at play in real dynamic networks. In this paper, we focus in particular on scientific communities by targeting the social part of science through a descriptive approach that aims at identifying the social determinants behind the emergence and the resilience of scientific communities. We consider that scientific communities are at the same time through co-authorship communities of practice and that they exist also as representations in the scientists mind, since references to other scientists’ works are not merely an objective link to a relevant work, but they reveal also social objects that one manipulates and refers to. In fact, our analysis focuses on the coexistence of co-authorships and citation dynamics and how their interplay affects the shape, the strength and the stability of the scientific systems. Such an analysis—performed through the time-varying graphs (TVG) formalism and derived metrics—concerns the evolution of a scientific network extracted from a portion of the arXiv repository covering a period of 10 years of publications in physics. We detect an example of how the selection process of citations may affect the shape of the co-authorships network from a sparser and disconnected structure to a dense and homogeneous one.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Fig. 1
Fig. 2
Fig. 3
Fig. 4
Fig. 5
Fig. 6
Fig. 7

Similar content being viewed by others

References

  • Amblard F, Casteigts A, Flocchini P, Quattrociocchi W, Santoro N (2011) On the temporal analysis of scientific network evolution. In: International conference on computational aspects of social networks (CASON 2011), Salamanca, Spain, 19–21 October 2011

  • Ang C (2011) Interaction networks and patterns of guild community in massively multiplayer online games. Soc Netw Anal Min 1–13. http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s13278-011-0025-9

  • Barabasi A, Jeong H, Neda Z, Ravasz E, Schubert A, Vicsek T (2002) Evolution of the social network of scientific collaborations. Physica A 311:590–614

    Article  MathSciNet  MATH  Google Scholar 

  • Barrat A, Barthelemy M, Vespignani A (2008) Dynamical processes on complex networks. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge

  • Blondel VD, Guillaume J-L, Lambiotte R, Lefebvre E (2008) Fast unfolding of communities in large networks. J Stat Mech 2008(10):P10008. http://stacks.iop.org/1742-5468/2008/i=10/a=P10008

  • Brunetti S, Lodi E, Quattrociocchi W (2011) Dynamic monopolies in colored tori. In: Proceedings of the 13th workshop on advances in parallel and distributed computational models APCDM@IPDPS 2011

  • Casteigts A, Flocchini P, Quattrociocchi W, Santoro N (2011) Time-varying graphs and dynamic networks. In: Proceedings of the 10th international conference on adhoc networks and wireless (ADHOC-NOW), Paderborn, Germany, 18–20 July 2011

  • Castellano C, Fortunato S, Loreto V (2009) Statistical physics of social dynamics. Rev Mod Phys 81(2):591. doi:10.1103/RevModPhys.81.591. http://dx.doi.org/10.1103/RevModPhys.81.591

    Google Scholar 

  • Davidsen J, Ebel H, Bornholdt S (2002) Emergence of a small world from local interactions: modeling acquaintance networks. Phys Rev Lett 88(12):128701. 10.1103/PhysRevLett.88.128701

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • De Solla Price D (1965) Networks of scientific papers. Science 149(3683):510–515

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Deffuant G, Neau D, Amblard F, Weisbuch G (2001) Mixing beliefs among interacting agents. Adv Complex Syst 3:87–98

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Dill J (2004) Measuring network connectivity for bicycling and walking. In: TRB Annual Meeting. Transportation Research Board

  • Freeman L (1979) Centrality in social networks: conceptual clarification. Soci Netw 1:215–239

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Gehrke J, Ginsparg P, Kleinberg J (2003) Overview of the 2003 KDD cup. SIGKDD Explor Newsl 5(2):149–151

  • Gilbert F, Simonetto P, Zaidi F, Jourdan F, Bourqui R (2011) Communities and hierarchical structures in dynamic social networks: analysis and visualization. Soc Netw Anal Min 1:83–95. http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s13278-010-0002-8.10.1007/s13278-010-0002-8

  • Gilbert N (1977) Referencing as persuasion. Soc Stud Sci 7:113–122

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Guimera R, Uzzi B, Spiro J, Amaral LA (2005) Team assembly mechanisms determine collaboration network structure and team performance. Science 308(5722):697–702

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Holland P, Leinhardt S (1998) Transitivity in structural models of small groups. Comp Group Stud 2:107–124

    Google Scholar 

  • Holme P (2005) Network reachability of real-world contact sequences. Phys Rev E 71(4):46119

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Hummon NP, Doreian P (1989) Connectivity in a citation network: the development of DNA theory

  • Klemm K, Eguíluz VM (2002) Highly clustered scale-free networks. Phys Rev E 65(3):036123

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Konig S, Balke T, Quattrociocchi W, Paolucci M, Eymann T (2009) On the effects of reputation in the internet of services. In: ICORE 2009. Gargonza, Italy

  • Kossinets G, Kleinberg J, Watts D (2008) The structure of information pathways in a social communication network. In: Proceedings of the 14th ACM SIGKDD internaional conference on knowledge discovery and data mining (KDD 2008), pp 435–443

  • Kostakos V (2009) Temporal graphs. Phys A Stat Mech App 388(6):1007–1023

    Article  MathSciNet  Google Scholar 

  • Leskovec J, Chakrabarti D, Kleinberg JM, Faloutsos C, Ghahramani Z (2010) Kronecker graphs: an approach to modeling networks. J Mach Learn Res 11:985–1042

    MathSciNet  MATH  Google Scholar 

  • Leskovec J, Kleinberg JM, Faloutsos C (2007) Graph evolution: densification and shrinking diameters. TKDD 1(1)

  • MacRoberts M, MacRoberts B (1996) Problems of citation analysis. Scientometrics 36(3):435–444

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Mataric M (1992) Designing emergent behaviors: from local interactions to collective intelligence. In: Proceedings of the international conference on simulation of adaptive behavior: from animals to animats 2:432–441

  • Mazloumian A, Eom YH, Helbing D, Lozano S, Fortunato S (2011) How citation boosts promote scientific paradigm shifts and nobel prizes. PLoS ONE 6(5):e18975

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Nakao H, Mikhailov A (2010) Turing patterns in network-organized activator-inhibitor systems. Nat Phys 6(7):544–550

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Newman MEJ (2001) Clustering and preferential attachment in growing networks. Phys Rev E 64

  • Newman MEJ (2001) The structure of scientific collaboration networks. Proc Natl Acad Sci USA 98(2):404–409

    Google Scholar 

  • Newman MEJ (2004) Coauthorship networks and patterns of scientific collaboration. Proc Natl Acad Sci USA 101:5200–5205

    Google Scholar 

  • Newman MEJ (2004) Who is the best connected scientist? a study of scientific coauthorship networks. In: Ben-Naim E, Frauenfelder H, Toroczkai Z (eds) Complex networks, Springer, Berlin, pp 337–370

  • Peltomäki M, Alava M (2006) Correlations in bipartite collaboration networks. J Stat Mech 2006(1):P01010. http://stacks.iop.org/1742-5468/2006/i=01/a=P01010

  • Pham M, Klamma R, Jarke M (2011) Development of computer science disciplines: a social network analysis approach. Soc Netw Anal Min 1(4):321–340. http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s13278-011-0024-x

  • Powell W, White D, Koput K (2005) Network dynamics and field evolution: the growth of interorganizational collaboration in the life sciences. Am J Sociol 110(4):1132–1205

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Quattrociocchi W, Conte R, Lodi E (2010) Simulating opinion dynamics in heterogeneous communication systems. ECCS 2010, Lisbon, Portugal

  • Quattrociocchi W Conte R, Lodi E (2011) Opinions manipulation: Media, power and gossip. Adv Complex Syst (in press)

  • Radicchi F, Fortunato S, Markiness B, Vespignani A (2009) Diffusion of scientific credits and the ranking of scientists. Phys Rev E 80

  • Redner S (2005) Citation statistics from 110 years of physical review. Phys Rev Phys Today 58:49–54

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Santoro N, Quattrociocchi W, Casteigts A, Flocchini P, Amblard F (2011) Time-varying graphs and social network analysis. Temporal indicators and metrics 33–38

  • Satorras RP, Vespignani A (2010) Complex networks: patterns of complexity. Nat Phy 6(7):480–481

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Shao Z, Zhou H (2009) Dynamics-driven evolution to structural heterogeneity in complex networks. Phys A Stat Mech Appl 388(4):523–528

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Taramasco C, Cointet JP, Roth C (2010) Academic team formation as evolving hypergraphs. Scientometrics

  • Wagner C, Leydesdorff K (2005) Network structure, self-organization, and the growth of international collaboration in science. Res Policy 34(10):1608–1618. http://www.citebase.org/abstract?id=oai:arXiv.org:physics/0508027

    Google Scholar 

  • Watts DJ (1999) Networks, dynamics and the small world phenomenon. AJS

  • Woolley DR (1994) PLATO: The emergence of online community. http://thinkofit.com/plato/dwplato.htm

Download references

Acknowledgments

This work was partially supported by the Future and Emerging Technologies programme FP7-COSI-ICT of the European Commission through project QLectives (Grant no.: 231200). The authors want to express gratitude to Hypnotoad and to Geronimo Stilton for the precious suggestions during the development of this work.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

Authors

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Walter Quattrociocchi.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Cite this article

Quattrociocchi, W., Amblard, F. & Galeota, E. Selection in scientific networks. Soc. Netw. Anal. Min. 2, 229–237 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13278-011-0043-7

Download citation

  • Received:

  • Revised:

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s13278-011-0043-7

Keywords

Navigation