Discussion of “Co-citation and Co-authorship Networks of Statisticians” by Pengsheng Ji, Jiashun Jin, Zheng Tracy Ke, and Wanshan Li

Abstract

We congratulate the authors on an interesting paper and on making an important contribution to the network analysis community through compiling a large new dataset which will spur further work on multilayer, dynamic and other complex network settings. This discussion focuses on the paper’s particular methods and applications in dynamic network analysis. Complexity of dynamic network data leads to many necessary analyst choices in both data processing and network modeling. Where possible, we will compare the choices made in this paper with other possibilities from recent literature on dynamic network analysis. One of the important points of the paper is that much of our network data has always been dynamic. For instance, communication networks consisting of sent and received E-mails come with time stamps, whether we choose to incorporate them or not. Developing statistical methods that take advantage of this time varying structure will lead to greater efficiency, novel insights, and generally allow us to take full advantage of rich modern datasets like the one featured in this paper.