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Fragmented Romanian Sociology: Growth and Structure of the Collaboration Network
Structural patterns in collaboration networks are essential for understanding how new ideas, research practices, innovation or cooperation circulate and develop within academic communities and between and within university departments. In our research, we explore and investigate the structure of the...
Autores principales: | , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
Public Library of Science
2014
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4237370/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25409180 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0113271 |
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author | Hâncean, Marian-Gabriel Perc, Matjaž Vlăsceanu, Lazăr |
author_facet | Hâncean, Marian-Gabriel Perc, Matjaž Vlăsceanu, Lazăr |
author_sort | Hâncean, Marian-Gabriel |
collection | PubMed |
description | Structural patterns in collaboration networks are essential for understanding how new ideas, research practices, innovation or cooperation circulate and develop within academic communities and between and within university departments. In our research, we explore and investigate the structure of the collaboration network formed by the academics working full-time within all the 17 sociology departments across Romania. We show that the collaboration network is sparse and fragmented, and that it constitutes an environment that does not promote the circulation of new ideas and innovation within the field. Although recent years have witnessed an increase in the productivity of Romanian sociologists, there is still ample room for improvement in terms of the interaction infrastructure that ought to link individuals together so that they could maximize their potentials. We also fail to discern evidence in favor of the Matthew effect governing the growth of the network, which suggests scientific success and productivity are not rewarded. Instead, the structural properties of the collaboration network are partly those of a core-periphery network, where the spread of innovation and change can be explained by structural equivalence rather than by interpersonal influence models. We also provide support for the idea that, within the observed network, collaboration is the product of homophily rather than prestige effects. Further research on the subject based on data from other countries in the region is needed to place our results in a comparative framework, in particular to discern whether the behavior of the Romanian sociologist community is unique or rather common. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-4237370 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2014 |
publisher | Public Library of Science |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-42373702014-11-21 Fragmented Romanian Sociology: Growth and Structure of the Collaboration Network Hâncean, Marian-Gabriel Perc, Matjaž Vlăsceanu, Lazăr PLoS One Research Article Structural patterns in collaboration networks are essential for understanding how new ideas, research practices, innovation or cooperation circulate and develop within academic communities and between and within university departments. In our research, we explore and investigate the structure of the collaboration network formed by the academics working full-time within all the 17 sociology departments across Romania. We show that the collaboration network is sparse and fragmented, and that it constitutes an environment that does not promote the circulation of new ideas and innovation within the field. Although recent years have witnessed an increase in the productivity of Romanian sociologists, there is still ample room for improvement in terms of the interaction infrastructure that ought to link individuals together so that they could maximize their potentials. We also fail to discern evidence in favor of the Matthew effect governing the growth of the network, which suggests scientific success and productivity are not rewarded. Instead, the structural properties of the collaboration network are partly those of a core-periphery network, where the spread of innovation and change can be explained by structural equivalence rather than by interpersonal influence models. We also provide support for the idea that, within the observed network, collaboration is the product of homophily rather than prestige effects. Further research on the subject based on data from other countries in the region is needed to place our results in a comparative framework, in particular to discern whether the behavior of the Romanian sociologist community is unique or rather common. Public Library of Science 2014-11-19 /pmc/articles/PMC4237370/ /pubmed/25409180 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0113271 Text en © 2014 Hâncean et al http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are properly credited. |
spellingShingle | Research Article Hâncean, Marian-Gabriel Perc, Matjaž Vlăsceanu, Lazăr Fragmented Romanian Sociology: Growth and Structure of the Collaboration Network |
title | Fragmented Romanian Sociology: Growth and Structure of the Collaboration Network |
title_full | Fragmented Romanian Sociology: Growth and Structure of the Collaboration Network |
title_fullStr | Fragmented Romanian Sociology: Growth and Structure of the Collaboration Network |
title_full_unstemmed | Fragmented Romanian Sociology: Growth and Structure of the Collaboration Network |
title_short | Fragmented Romanian Sociology: Growth and Structure of the Collaboration Network |
title_sort | fragmented romanian sociology: growth and structure of the collaboration network |
topic | Research Article |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4237370/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25409180 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0113271 |
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