 Scientific discovery and topological transitions in collaboration networksLuís M.A. Bettencourt, David I. Kaiser and Jasleen Kaur Journal of Informetrics, 2009, vol. 3, issue 3, 210-221 Abstract: We analyze the advent and development of eight scientific fields from their inception to maturity and map the evolution of their networks of collaboration over time, measured in terms of co-authorship of scientific papers. We show that as a field develops it undergoes a topological transition in its collaboration structure between a small disconnected graph to a much larger network where a giant connected component of collaboration appears. As a result, the number of edges and nodes in the largest component undergoes a transition between a small fraction of the total to a majority of all occurrences. These results relate to many qualitative observations of the evolution of technology and discussions of the “structure of scientific revolutions”. We analyze this qualitative change in network topology in terms of several quantitative graph theoretical measures, such as density, diameter, and relative size of the network's largest component. Keywords: Scientific discovery; Collaboration networks; Phase transitions; Models of science evolution (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:infome:v:3:y:2009:i:3:p:210-221 DOI: 10.1016/j.joi.2009.03.001 Access Statistics for this article Journal of Informetrics is currently edited by Leo Egghe More articles in Journal of Informetrics from Elsevier |
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