Collaboration in computer science: a network science approach. Part I

TL;DR

This paper uses network science to analyze co-authorship patterns in computer science from 1936 onward, revealing structural properties and collaboration dynamics within the field.

Contribution

It introduces a network science approach to study computer science collaboration networks, including various sub-networks and large-scale properties, providing a comprehensive picture of scholarly collaboration.

Findings

High clustering in collaboration networks

Presence of star collaborators influencing network structure

Consistent collaboration patterns over decades

Abstract

Co-authorship in publications within a discipline uncovers interesting properties of the analysed field. We represent collaboration in academic papers of computer science in terms of differently grained networks, including those sub-networks that emerge from conference and journal co-authorship only. We take advantage of the network science paraphernalia to take a picture of computer science collaboration including all papers published in the field since 1936. We investigate typical bibliometric properties like scientific productivity of authors and collaboration level in papers, as well as large-scale network properties like reachability and average separation distance among scholars, distribution of the number of scholar collaborators, network resilience and dependence on star collaborators, network clustering, and network assortativity by number of collaborators.