Academic match-makers in sociology: Their role in collaboration network formation
Hongkan Chen, Qingshan Zhou, Robin Haunschild, Yi Bu

TL;DR
This study explores the role of 'academic match-makers' in sociology, revealing their prevalence, characteristics, and impact on collaboration networks and high-impact, disruptive research.
Contribution
It operationalizes and analyzes the match-maker phenomenon using MAG data, highlighting their strategic role and evolution in scientific collaboration networks.
Findings
Nearly 30% of authors with over 20 publications have served as match-makers.
Match-makers are more common among early-career researchers and peak around their tenth year.
Publications involving a match-maker are more likely to be high-impact and disruptive.
Abstract
In modern scientific collaboration networks, certain researchers play a pivotal role in bridging scholars who have never worked together - a phenomenon we term academic "match-makers." Despite their potential importance, the prevalence, characteristics, benefits, and long-term trajectory of these individuals remain underexplored. Using the Microsoft Academic Graph (MAG), we operationalized a match-maker as an author who, in a given publication, introduced a first-time collaboration between two co-authors, each of whom had previously collaborated with the match-maker but not with each other. We employed a configuration null model to distinguish observed patterns from random chance. Our findings reveal that the match-maker phenomenon is deliberate, prevalent, and consequential. Among authors with over 20 publications, nearly 30% have served as a match-maker, and the probability of acting…
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