Network of Econophysicists: a weighted network to investigate the development of Econophysics

TL;DR

This paper constructs a weighted directed network of Econophysics research from 1992 to 2003, analyzing its structural properties to understand the field's development and proposing a general method for measuring connection weights.

Contribution

It introduces a novel approach to measure connection weights in scientific communication networks and applies it to Econophysics, revealing structural insights into the field's evolution.

Findings

Degree and weight distributions follow specific patterns

Betweenness centrality highlights key researchers and papers

The proposed weight measurement method is broadly applicable

Abstract

The development of Econophysics is studied from the perspective of scientific communication networks. Papers in Econophysics published from 1992 to 2003 are collected. Then a weighted and directed network of scientific communication, including collaboration, citation and personal discussion, is constructed. Its static geometrical properties, including degree distribution, weight distribution, weight per degree, and betweenness centrality, give a nice overall description of the research works. The way we introduced here to measure the weight of connections can be used as a general one to construct weighted network.