Introduction to the special issue on scientific networks

Abstract

Scholars have explored the science of science from a networks perspective from the early days of the study of social networks. Price (1965) pioneered the methodology and theoretical import of citation networks. Crane (1969) examined the social structure among scientists to test the invisible college hypothesis wherein groups of researchers working in a common area shared informal ties with one another. Indeed, science has been described as “a complex, self-organizing, and evolving network of scholars, projects, papers, and ideas” (Fortunato et al., 2018, p. 1). Hence, it is not surprising that scientific networks play a significant role within the larger domain of network science, focusing on the relational nature of scientific endeavors. And by doing so they have contributed to advances in network science while also contributing to the emergent debates about the transformation of science. Recent trends in analysis of science transformation are focused on a rising demand for interdisciplinary collaboration, knowledge application, decreasing the gap between knowledge production and transfer to practice, and increasing interaction between science and other societal actors and spheres (industry and government). Research on scientific networks, with its relational nature, helps us to understand and enable these modern trends of science transformation across disciplines. It enables us to analyze themultidimensional networks encompassing scientists, scientific organizations, funding entities, publication outlets, and projects; to discover the reasons for their collaboration, integration, importance; and to measure their prestige, popularity, success, and social impact. In short, how and why collaborations form—and how they perform. In light of these intellectual developments, a group of scholars, led by Anuška Ferligoj, Valentina Kuskova, and Dmitry Zaytsev, convened an International Workshop on Scientific Networks in Moscow, Russia, on July 20–21, 2019. Another special session on scientific networks was held at the Seventh International Workshop on Social Network Analysis at the University of Salerno, Italy, on October 29–31, 2019. The papers presented at these workshops, and the ensuing intellectual dialog, led to the development of a call for papers to this special issue of Network Science. This special issue demonstrates the diversity of recent scholarship on scientific networks. This diversity is reflected in the types of scientific networks studied, the multiple theoretic frameworks utilized to formulate questions, the development, and deployment of advancedmethods to analyze them, and their applicability to various scientific disciplines and other fields. The articles in this special issue represent only a quarter of all inquiries we received in response to the advertisement for this special issue. Yet, they cover the wide range of possible types of scientific networks: the nature and effectiveness of collaboration networks, issues related to quality of scientific networks data, development of new methodology for applied scientific network analysis, examining the effects of individual journals on the development of scientific networks, or development of entire fields.