Research networks generated by organizational structures, co-authorships and citations: A Case Study of German Centre for Integrative Biodiversity Research (iDiv)

TL;DR

This study analyzes collaboration and citation networks within the German Centre for Integrative Biodiversity Research (iDiv) from 2013-2020, revealing steady growth in publications but limited internal cohesion and cross-disciplinary integration.

Contribution

It provides a detailed network analysis of research collaborations and citations in a major biodiversity research center, highlighting patterns and gaps in interdisciplinary cooperation.

Findings

Steady increase in publications and research collaboration intensity.

Limited internal scientific collaboration momentum compared to international trends.

No clear evidence of cross-disciplinary research focus.

Abstract

Exploring whether different patterns emerge across networks generated by organizational structures, co-authorships and citations for characterizing and evaluating cooperative relationships is particularly important for transferring the research results into practice. This research-in-progress paper focuses on using the structure of scientific collaborations and mapping knowledge transfer to gain insight into the influence of collaborative research centres linked to the German Research Foundation (DFG) funding. Within the German Centre for Integrative Biodiversity Research (iDiv), the DFG sponsors research conducted across all participating universities and institutes by more than hundred research groups who bring their expertise to the manifold research fields of biodiversity. Using iDiv research from 2013-2020, we build co-authorship networks and identify the most cohesive communities in terms of collaboration and compare them with groups presented on its website. Corresponding cited and citing works are analysed by distributions to investigate disciplinary collaboration. Our findings show that the number of publications and the intensity of research collaboration have maintained a steady increase. Despite the highly cohesive cooperation structure addressed by iDiv, the internal scientific collaboration has not gained strong momentum compared with its growing trends in international collaborations. The tendency towards covering cross-disciplinary research foci is not evident.