Academic collaboration networks study on library and information science community

Promoting open and inclusive scholarly communication remains a central theme in Library and Information Science (LIS) research. This study examines collaboration patterns through co-authorship analysis of 142,983 LIS publications from 1900 to 2023, employing social network analysis to investigate the topological structure, connection tendencies, and community division within academic collaboration networks across multiple perspectives. Our findings reveal a significant shift from individual efforts to team collaboration in academic research, with collaboration networks exhibiting distinct small-world properties that may facilitate efficient knowledge dissemination. Although collaboration networks exhibit high transitivity and clustering, the distribution of academic communities is influenced by national borders and geographic proximity. The productivity of cities and institutions follows the double power-law distribution, indicating heterogeneous academic production patterns and a potential core-periphery hierarchical structure. Highly productive authors exhibit a higher proportion of “super-partnerships” and display an assortative communication pattern that differs from those observed at the national level.