Collaboration Networks and Career Trajectories: What Do Metadata from Data Repositories Tell Us?. Issue 1 (14th October 2022)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Hemsley, Jeff; Qin, Jian; Bratt, Sarah; Smith, Alexander
• Is Part Of: Proceedings of the Association for Information Science and Technology. Volume 59:Issue 1(2022)
• Page Start: 100
• Page End: 110
• Publication Date: 2022-10-14
• Subjects: Assessment metrics -- Collaboration capacity -- Collaboration networks -- Metadata analytics -- Research performance assessment; Information science -- Congresses; Information technology -- Congresses; Information science; Information technology; Conference papers and proceedings; 020
• DOI: 10.1002/pra2.608
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 2373-9231

Abstract

Abstract: Science is increasingly carried out through scientific collaborations, allowing researchers pool their experience, knowledge, and skills. In this work we identify factors related to a scientist's collaboration capacity, their ability accumulate new collaborations over their career. To do this offer a new collaboration capacity framework and begin the work of validating it empirically by testing a number of hypotheses. We use data from GenBank, a cyberinfrastructure (CI)‐enabled data repository that stores and manages scientific data. The data allow us to construct longitudinal networks, thereby giving us yearly scientific collaboration maps. We find that a scientist's network position at an early stage is related to their capacity to build new collaborations and that researchers who manage an upward trend in productivity tend to have higher collaboration capacity. Our work makes a contribution to science of science studies by offering a collaboration capacity framework and providing partial empirical support for it.