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Center for Nonlinear Studies |
The co-authorship network of scientists represents a prototype of complex evolving networks. It is now becoming possible to study quantitatively the social collective dynamics of innovation and scientific discovery. Quantitative progress in this field is of great interest to foment innovation and plan more efficient funding. We aim to track and characterize the temporal evolution of the social network (graph) associated with five scientific discoveries namely Prions, Inflation, H5N1 Influenza, Quantum Computing and Carbon nanotubes. This involves the identification of publication sources, the automated extraction of author and publication information, the construction of graphs, and their characterization in terms of diagnostics from complex networks. The novelty of our project lies in the analyses of the dynamics of co-authorship networks for scientific discoveries in the light of temporal expansion of the field, especially at the onset of a new discovery or breakthrough. We formulate the hypotheses for sudden increase in number of authors and publications after a breakthrough in scientific field and emergence of giant component based on relation between number of authors, publications, ratio of large component and number of nodes as well as signatures in other structural quantities.
Host: Markus Berndt