The Network of Scientific Collaborations within the European Framework Programme

TL;DR

This paper analyzes the structure of scientific collaborations within the European Framework Programme using complex network theory, revealing a scale-free, hierarchically modular network with growth dynamics and information flow patterns.

Contribution

It applies complex network analysis to characterize the collaboration network, uncovering its scale-free, hierarchical, and growth properties, which were not previously documented.

Findings

The network is scale-free with accelerated growth.

Collaborations exhibit hierarchical modularity.

Information flow depends on participant size, not geography.

Abstract

We use the emergent field of Complex Networks to analyze the network of scientific collaborations between entities (universities, research organizations, industry related companies,...) which collaborate in the context of the so-called Framework Programme. We demonstrate here that it is a scale--free network with an accelerated growth, which implies that the creation of new collaborations is encouraged. Moreover, these collaborations possess hierarchical modularity. Likewise, we find that the information flow depends on the size of the participants but not on geographical constraints.