Manifestation of research teams in journal literature: A growth model of papers, authors, collaboration, coauthorship, weak ties, and Lotka's law

  • Authors:

  • Steven A. Morris;Michel L. Goldstein

  • Affiliations:

  • School of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Oklahoma State University, 202 Engineering So. Stillwater, Oklahoma 74078;School of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Oklahoma State University, 202 Engineering So. Stillwater, Oklahoma 74078

  • Venue:
  • Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology
  • Year:
  • 2007

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Abstract

This article introduces a team-based model of researchers in a specialty and investigates the manifestation of such teams in a specialty's literature. The proposed qualitative behavioral model, with its mathematical expression as a growth model, is significant because it simultaneously describes the two phenomena of collaboration and author productivity (Lotka's law) in a specialty. The model is nested: A team process models the creation of research teams and the success-breeds-success process of their production of articles, while at a lower level the productivity of authors within teams is also modeled as a success-breeds-success process. Interteam collaboration (weak ties) is modeled as random events. This simple growth model is shown to faithfully mimic six network metrics of bipartite article-author networks. The model is demonstrated on three example article collections from specialties that have a wide range of degree of collaboration: (a) a distance education collection with low collaboration degree, (b) a complex networks collection with typical collaboration degree, and (c) an atrial ablation collection with heavy collaboration degree. © 2007 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.