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Scientific success from the perspective of the strength of weak ties

We present the first complete verification of Granovetter’s theory of social networks using a massive dataset, i.e. DBLP computer science bibliography database. For this purpose, we study a coauthorship network, which is considered one of the most important examples that contradicts the universality...

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Autores principales: Fronczak, Agata, Mrowinski, Maciej J., Fronczak, Piotr
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Nature Publishing Group UK 2022
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8948253/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35332225
http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-022-09118-8
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author Fronczak, Agata
Mrowinski, Maciej J.
Fronczak, Piotr
author_facet Fronczak, Agata
Mrowinski, Maciej J.
Fronczak, Piotr
author_sort Fronczak, Agata
collection PubMed
description We present the first complete verification of Granovetter’s theory of social networks using a massive dataset, i.e. DBLP computer science bibliography database. For this purpose, we study a coauthorship network, which is considered one of the most important examples that contradicts the universality of this theory. We achieve this goal by rejecting the assumption of the symmetry of social ties. Our approach is grounded in well-established heterogeneous (degree-based) mean-field theory commonly used to study dynamical processes on complex networks. Granovetter’s theory is based on two hypotheses that assign different roles to interpersonal, information-carrying connections. The first hypothesis states that strong ties carrying the majority of interaction events are located mainly within densely connected groups of people. The second hypothesis maintains that these groups are connected by sparse weak ties that are of vital importance for the diffusion of information—individuals who have access to weak ties have an advantage over those who do not. Given the scientific collaboration network, with strength of directed ties measured by the asymmetric fraction of joint publications, we show that scientific success is strongly correlated with the structure of a scientist’s collaboration network. First, among two scientists, with analogous achievements, the one with weaker ties tends to have the higher h-index, and second, teams connected by such ties create more cited publications.
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spelling pubmed-89482532022-03-28 Scientific success from the perspective of the strength of weak ties Fronczak, Agata Mrowinski, Maciej J. Fronczak, Piotr Sci Rep Article We present the first complete verification of Granovetter’s theory of social networks using a massive dataset, i.e. DBLP computer science bibliography database. For this purpose, we study a coauthorship network, which is considered one of the most important examples that contradicts the universality of this theory. We achieve this goal by rejecting the assumption of the symmetry of social ties. Our approach is grounded in well-established heterogeneous (degree-based) mean-field theory commonly used to study dynamical processes on complex networks. Granovetter’s theory is based on two hypotheses that assign different roles to interpersonal, information-carrying connections. The first hypothesis states that strong ties carrying the majority of interaction events are located mainly within densely connected groups of people. The second hypothesis maintains that these groups are connected by sparse weak ties that are of vital importance for the diffusion of information—individuals who have access to weak ties have an advantage over those who do not. Given the scientific collaboration network, with strength of directed ties measured by the asymmetric fraction of joint publications, we show that scientific success is strongly correlated with the structure of a scientist’s collaboration network. First, among two scientists, with analogous achievements, the one with weaker ties tends to have the higher h-index, and second, teams connected by such ties create more cited publications. Nature Publishing Group UK 2022-03-24 /pmc/articles/PMC8948253/ /pubmed/35332225 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-022-09118-8 Text en © The Author(s) 2022 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Open AccessThis article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) .
spellingShingle Article
Fronczak, Agata
Mrowinski, Maciej J.
Fronczak, Piotr
Scientific success from the perspective of the strength of weak ties
title Scientific success from the perspective of the strength of weak ties
title_full Scientific success from the perspective of the strength of weak ties
title_fullStr Scientific success from the perspective of the strength of weak ties
title_full_unstemmed Scientific success from the perspective of the strength of weak ties
title_short Scientific success from the perspective of the strength of weak ties
title_sort scientific success from the perspective of the strength of weak ties
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8948253/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35332225
http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-022-09118-8
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