A Survey on Co-authorship Network of Iran
Researchers in the Research Area of Parasitology in Web of Science during 1900-2013
Authors??
Abstract
This paper aims to investigate the Iranian researchers’ outputs in the research area of parasitology from 1900 through 2013 based on the web of Science databases and visualize and analyse the scientific performance of these researchers’ co-authorship network according to their scientific publications. The data were drawn from the WoS databases on July 10th 2013. Totally 1048 documents of all types in research area of parasitology by Iranian researches were retrieved. By using Coauthor.exe, UCINET and NETDRAW softwares the co-authorship map was drawn and the analysis was carried out based on social network analysis measures. The results show that most of publications were related to 2012, MOHEBALI with about 9% of all documents was the most Iranian prolific author in parasitology field. The Iranian researches have published mostly (266 documents) in IRANIAN JOURNAL OF PARASITOLOGY. According to the subject field, most of these documents belonged to TROPICAL MEDICINE subject area. Most of Iranian researchers’ scientific collaboration was conducted with United States of ENGLAND.
Co-authorship network of researchers consisted of 78 authors and density degree of the network is 0.57. This degree shows that this network has an almost medium density. In fact, authors in the network have had relations with each other in moderate level. In this network MOHEBALI ranked top in all of centrality measures.
Keywords: Co-authorship network, Parasitology, Iranian scientific output, Social network analysis
Introduc¬tion
Nowadays collaboration is a significant aspect of research community and the most common symbol of collaboration is co-authorship.
Co-authoring among researchers forms a network that is called co-author network which is a kind of social network.
Co-authorship networks are an important class of social networks and have been used extensively to determine the structure of scientific collaborations and the status of individual researchers. Although somewhat similar to the much studied citation networks in the scientific literature [1], co-authorship implies a much stronger social bond than citation. Citations can occur without the authors knowing each other and can span across time. Coauthorship implies a temporal and collegial relationship that places it more squarely in the realm of social network analysis [2].
Social network is a network of relationships which is made as a result of cooperation between scientists, organizations, countries, and so on in common or different majors and their interrelationships [3]. SNA assumes that people or groups are connected together by social relationships, forming a social network as a representation of relationships among them [4].
“A Co-authorship network is a social network in which the authors through participation in one or more publication through an indirect path have linked to each other”. [5]
Various methods and measures are used in social network analysis but when we want to study statues of one actor in network we should use centrality measures. In the other words, "the status of an actor is usually expressed in terms of its centrality" [2].
Degree centrality of a node is defined as the total number of edges that are adjacent to this node. Degree centrality represents the simplest instantiation of the notion of centrality since it measures only how many connections tie authors to their immediate neighbors in the network [2]. Degree centrality is equal to the number of connections that an actor (a node) has with other actors [6], which is the number of links going into or coming out of a node in a network [7].
Closeness centrality focuses on how ‘‘close’’ an actor is to all other actors. It is measured as a function of mean geodesic/shortest distances [8]. However, authors may be well connected to their immediate neighbors but be part of a relatively isolated clique. Although locally well connected, overall centrality is low. Closeness centrality therefore expands the definition of degree centrality by focusing on how close an author is to all other authors. To calculate a node’s closeness centrality we determine its shortest-path distances to all authors in the network and invert these values to a metric of closeness. A central author is thus characterized by many, short connections to other authors in the networks [2].
Betweenness centrality represents a different operationalization of centrality. It is based on determining how often a particular node is found on the shortest path between any pair of nodes in the network. Nodes that are often on the shortest-path between other nodes are deemed highly central because they control the flow of information in the network. Betweenness centrality can be used in disconnected networks; however it may generate a large number of nodes with zero centrality, since many nodes may not act as a bridge in the network [2]. This measure is based on the number of shortest paths passing through an actor. Actors with a high betweenness play the role of connecting different groups, as ‘middlemen’ [6].
Many researchers studied Iranian co-authorship networks in various fields including medical sciences such as emergency medicine [9], medicine [10] and psychology and psychiatry [11], but as far as we found out, none of them investigated network of researches in parasitology. Parasitology is a field in which many universities has student in different degrees [12] and many researches base their researches on, so we decided to study the works of these researches in international level.
The aim of this study was to investigate the Iranian researchers’ outputs in the research area of parasitology from 1900 through 2013 based on the web of Science databases and visualize and analyse the scientific performance of these researchers’ co-authorship network according to their scientific publications.
Materials & Methods
Data were gathered from Web of Science (WOS) on July 10th, 2013. Iranian publications during 1900-2013 Indexed in SCI-EXPANDED, SSCI, A&HCI, CPCI-S, CPCI-SSH refined by RESEARCH AREAS and all documents in PARASITOLOGY chosen to analyze. Totally 1048 documents of all types including articles, biographical items, book reviews and etc. were retrieved. These raw data were saved in files each containing 500 records in Plaintext format. The primary analysis was done through WOS analysis section. For making the social network of Iranian researchers’ co- authorship, all the files were merged together and one file, then by using Coauthor.exe co-author matrix was constructed, using UCINET and NETDRAW softwares the co-authorship map was drawn and the analysis was carried out based on social network analysis measures such as centrality (closeness and betweenness and etc.).
Results
As showed in figure 1 investigating of outputs growth showed that the most outputs is in 2012 and the lowest is belong to the years 1972, 1976,1983,1984, 1992 and 1997 with just 1 outputs.
Figure1. Growth of Iran’s authors in the Parasitology outputs in Web of Science during 1900-2013
Tale 2 shows the rank list of the top ten Iran’s authors in the Parasitology field based on the publication numbers. As shown, MOHEBALI M was the most prolific author, with 85 papers. VATANDOOST H and OSHAGHI MA with 52 and 41 papers ranked second and third respectively.
Table2. Top 10 Prolific Iran’s authors in Parasitology field
Authors records % of 1048
MOHEBALI M 85 8.111
VATANDOOST H 52 4.962
OSHAGHI MA 41 3.912
KAZEMI B 39 3.721
MOBEDI I 35 3.34
KIA EB 32 3.053
KHAMESIPOUR A 32 3.053
HAGHIGHI A 31 2.958
ZAKERI S 30 2.863
RAEISI A 30 2.863
KESHAVARZ H 30 2.863
There were 54 countries/territories collaborated with Iran’s authors in Parasitology field during 1990-2013. Out of these 54 countries England with 38 documents had the highest number of collaboration, followed by USA and Germany with 28 and 19 documents respectively. The top 10 countries/territories were ranked based on the total number of collaboration can be seen in table 3.
Table3. Top 10 countries which have the most collaboration with Iran’s authors in Parasitology field
Countries/Territories records % of 1048
IRAN 1048 100
ENGLAND 38 3.626
USA 28 2.672
GERMANY 19 1.813
SPAIN 13 1.24
FRANCE 13 1.24
CANADA 13 1.24
AUSTRALIA 12 1.145
SCOTLAND 11 1.05
JAPAN 11 1.05
ITALY 11 1.05
The Iranian researches have published their papers in 44 scientific journals. Among these journals ten top journals published 35 or more papers which are about 80% of all papers. IRANIAN JOURNAL OF PARASITOLOGY was the top journal by publishing 266 documents, followed by PARASITOLOGY RESEARCH and IRANIAN JOURNAL OF ARTHROPOD BORNE DISEASES with 117 and 80 documents respectively. Theses Top 10 journals are shown in table 4.
Table4. Top 10 most preferred journals
Source Titles records % of 1048
IRANIAN JOURNAL OF PARASITOLOGY 266 25.382
PARASITOLOGY RESEARCH 117 11.164
IRANIAN JOURNAL OF ARTHROPOD BORNE DISEASES 80 7.634
EXPERIMENTAL PARASITOLOGY 69 6.584
VETERINARY PARASITOLOGY 65 6.202
ANNALS OF TROPICAL MEDICINE AND PARASITOLOGY 56 5.344
ACTA TROPICA 52 4.962
TROPICAL BIOMEDICINE 49 4.676
JOURNAL OF HELMINTHOLOGY 35 3.34
JOURNAL OF ARTHROPOD BORNE DISEASES 35 3.34
Examination the sub-subject of Parasitology has been interested by Iranian researcher showed that TROPICAL MEDICINE is ranked in the top of the list. These ranking is displayed in table 5.
Table5.The research Categories in Parasitology field
Web of Science Categories records % of 1048
PARASITOLOGY 1048 100
TROPICAL MEDICINE 229 21.851
PUBLIC ENVIRONMENTAL OCCUPATIONAL HEALTH 185 17.653
VETERINARY SCIENCES 66 6.298
INFECTIOUS DISEASES 47 4.485
ZOOLOGY 45 4.294
IMMUNOLOGY 12 1.145
BIOCHEMISTRY MOLECULAR BIOLOGY 3 0.286
MICROBIOLOGY 2 0.191
VIROLOGY 1 0.095
“Collaboration is an intense form of interaction that allows for effective communication as well as the sharing of competence and other resources” [13]. In order to calculate Collaborative Coefficient(CC) we have used the formula below [14]:
Collaborative Coefficient (CC) is a number between 0 and 1, CC 0 means that a set of document has no collaboration and a number nearest to 1 means highest collaboration.
To get CC, Co-authorship pattern of Iran researchers in the Parasitology field in Web of Science during 1900-2013 was investigated and indentified that 5 or more author pattern is the prevailing pattern. These patterns are shown in figure 2.
Figure 2. Co-authorship pattern of Iran researchers in the Parasitology field in Web of Science during 1900-2013
Regarding this pattern and using mentioned formula, collaborative coefficient is equal 0.7 which means almost high collaboration among the authors.
Network
There were 500 authors involved in the total of 1048 papers in the field of Parasitology during 1990–2013 and 152 of them had at least one collaboration with others. Due to have a clear and distinct map of co-authorship network we use frequency thresholds and just authors with a collaboration threshold of >=20 were regarded. As a result the co-authorship network contains 78 nodes (authors).
Figure 3 shows the Co-authorship Network of Iran Researchers in Parasitology field in Web of Science during 1900-2013.
Figure3. Co-author network of Iran Researchers in Parasitology field in Web of Science during 1900-2013
As shown in Figure1. 78 authors formed this network with a density of 0.57 Otte & Rousseau defined density as "an indicator for the level of connectedness of a network. It is given as the number of lines in a graph divided by the maximum number of lines (the case where every author is connected to every other one) [6]. Hence, it is a relative measure with values between 0 and 1". The degree density of the network (0.57) shows that 57 % of total potential and possible relationships in the network were done so this network has a medium density. In fact, authors (nodes) in the network have had relations with each other in a moderate level.
3 centrality measures (Degree centrality, Betweenness centerality and Closeness centerality) were calculated for the network under study.
Degree centrality “in co-authorship network means that the most central authors are the ones who have the most connections to other authors in the network and are therefore the most active in sense of collaboration”. (15) According to degree centrality which showed in the table 6, Mohebali, M (257) have the highest co-authorship frequency with others followed by Vatandoost (133) and Oshaghi (123).
Table 6. Degree Centrality of co-author map of Iran’s authors in the Parasitology outputs in Web of Science during 1900-2013
Rank author Degree Centrality
1 Mohebali,M 257
2 Vatandoost,H 133
3 Oshaghi,MA 123
4 Rassi,Y 113
5 Kia,EB 98
6 Raeisi,A 83
7 Akhavan,AA 83
8 Zarei,Z 78
9 Abai,MR 78
10 Rezaeian,M 76
Betweenness is based on the number of shortest paths passing through an actor. Actors with a high betweenness play the role of connecting different groups, as ‘middlemen’ [6]. As we can see in the table 7, In the network under study Mohebali,M. have the highest betweenness centrality which means he is such a middleman in a network of Iran researchers in the research Area of parasitology in Web of Science during 1900-2013
Table 7. Betweenness Centrality of co-author map of Iran’s authors in the Parasitology outputs in Web of Science during 1900-2013
Rank author Betweenness Centrality
1 Mohebali,M 876.963
2 Raeisi,A 230.254
3 Kazemi,B 201.604
4 Kia,EB 118.066
5 Khamesipour,A 113.864
6 Rafati,S 106.836
7 Zarei,Z 91.883
8 Rassi,Y 84.636
9 Rezaeian,M 79.516
10 Rahbari,S 77.979
A high closeness for an author means that he is related to all others through a small number of paths [6]. A central author is thus characterized by many, short connections to other authors in the networks [2]. Based on the Closeness centrality showed in the table 8, Mohebali has the highest closeness in the whole network and kia and Zarei ranked second and third.
Table 8. Closeness Centrality of co-author map of Iran’s authors in the Parasitology outputs in Web of Science during 1900-2013
Rank author Closness Centrality
1 Mohebali,M 96
2 Kia,EB 131
3 Zarei,Z 132
4 Rezaeian,M 132
5 Vatandoost,H 132
6 Rassi,Y 132
7 Hajjaran,H 133
8 Mirhendi,H 135
9 Shojaee,S 136
10 Raeisi,A 137
Conclusion
Due to the importance of the collaboration in scientific works, many studies have investigated this issue in different levels [16] such as country level [17], university level [18.], discipline level [19, 20] and journal level [21, 22].
The present study showed that the tendency to teamwork among Iran researchers in Parasitology exists. Previous studies also got to conclusion that among medical research scientific collaboration is almost in the high level [21, 22], so the results are consistent with previous researches.
In this study 5 or more author pattern is the prevailing pattern which is not consistent with the previous studies that showed 2 author pattern is prevailing one[17,11 ]. The results showed that Mohebali is one of the main authors in map of co-author of Network of Iran Researchers in the Parasitology. He’s the first author in all centrality measures.
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