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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...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales: Hâncean, Marian-Gabriel, Perc, Matjaž, Vlăsceanu, Lazăr
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Public Library of Science 2014
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.
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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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