Social Network Sustainability Metrics: A Study of Co-authoring Behaviors in the Social Sciences, Using 2008-2017 Scopus Data for Vietnam

The study examines the co-authoring behaviors of 412 Vietnamese social scientists over the 2008-2017 period via a new method – social network analysis – to determine if these researchers have formed sustainable scientific communities, using Scopus data. The dataset provides an insightful look into the predominant form of collaboration, i.e. co-authorship, within the Vietnamese social science research communities. Through basic network metrics such as density and clustering coefficient, the study hypothesizes that the socially sustainable research communities are those with low clustering and high density. As any scholar’s position in a network can be specified by three quantities: number of publications, connections, and years in research, the distance metrics from the most productive to the rest are computed and compared. The study hypothesizes that if the distance is too large; it reflects the socially unsustainable situation in the network. The results indicate that certain level of social unsustainability exists in social sciences groups in Vietnam. Though the results are only indicative, it has opened up a fertile space for future enquiry into this matter.