Betweenness centrality as a driver of preferential attachment in the evolution of research collaboration networks

By A. Abbasi, Liaquat Hossain, Loet Leydesdorff. J. Informetrics, 2011

406 citations recorded by the source corpus.

We analyze whether preferential attachment in scientific coauthorship networks is different for authors with different forms of centrality. Using a complete database for the scientific specialty of research about “steel structures,” we show that betweenness centrality of an existing node is a significantly better predictor of preferential attachment by new entrants than degree or closeness centrality. During the growth of a network, preferential attachment shifts from (local) degree centrality to betweenness centrality as a global measure. An interpretation is that supervisors of PhD projects and postdocs broker between new entrants and the already existing network, and thus become focal to preferential attachment. Because of this mediation, scholarly networks can be expected to develop differently from networks which are predicated on preferential attachment to nodes with high degree centrality.

Subfields: Molecular Biology, Statistical and Nonlinear Physics, Statistics and Probability

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/f1c483aaccd47cd175636f0dc1c68f28900cfb59

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Molecular Biology

In Statistical and Nonlinear Physics

In Statistics and Probability

Citations in the corpus

The science of science: from the perspective of complex systems (2017, result): “Similar analyses have also been performed in other studies, considering some additional network measures such as link density and clique [200], a new centrality index called the Q -measure being proposed [201], and the betweenness being used as a driving force for the evolution of collaboration netw”