IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/wsi/ijmpcx/v25y2014i05ns0129183114400142.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Homophily versus preferential attachment: Evolutionary mechanisms of scientific collaboration networks

Author

Listed:
  • Zhen-Zhen Wang

    (Web Mining Lab, Department of Media and Communication, City University of Hong Kong, Tat Chee Avenue Kowloon, Hong Kong SAR, Hong Kong)

  • Jonathan J. H. Zhu

    (Web Mining Lab, Department of Media and Communication, City University of Hong Kong, Tat Chee Avenue Kowloon, Hong Kong SAR, Hong Kong)

Abstract

Homophily and preferential attachment are among the most recognized mechanisms of network evolution. Instead of examining the two mechanisms separately, this study considers them jointly in a scholarly collaboration network. Specifically, when a new scholar enters a field, how does he/she choose the first collaborator from the pool of available scholars? We find that new scholars tend to collaborate with someone who works in the same institution (which is called constrained acceptance), shares similar specialty interests (active choice), or has already worked with many collaborators (random action). We view constrained acceptance and active choice as supporting evidence for homophily (because similarity is attractive) and random action as supporting evidence for preferential attachment (because popularity is attractive). As such, both homophily and preferential attachment affect the evolution of collaboration networks. Furthermore, the influences vary over time with random action, constrained acceptance, and active choice taking turns to act the dominant force at the beginning, middle and later phases of the evolution process, respectively.

Suggested Citation

  • Zhen-Zhen Wang & Jonathan J. H. Zhu, 2014. "Homophily versus preferential attachment: Evolutionary mechanisms of scientific collaboration networks," International Journal of Modern Physics C (IJMPC), World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd., vol. 25(05), pages 1-8.
    • Handle: RePEc:wsi:ijmpcx:v:25:y:2014:i:05:n:s0129183114400142
    DOI: 10.1142/S0129183114400142
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.worldscientific.com/doi/abs/10.1142/S0129183114400142
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1142/S0129183114400142?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Peng Liu & Liang Gui & Huirong Wang & Muhammad Riaz, 2022. "A Two-Stage Deep-Learning Model for Link Prediction Based on Network Structure and Node Attributes," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 14(23), pages 1-15, December.
    2. Liu, Junwan & Guo, Xiaofei & Xu, Shuo & Song, Yinglu & Ding, Kaiyue, 2023. "A new interpretation of scientific collaboration patterns from the perspective of symbiosis: An investigation for long-term collaboration in publications," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 17(1).
    3. Sun, Yutao & Cao, Cong, 2018. "The evolving relations between government agencies of innovation policymaking in emerging economies: A policy network approach and its application to the Chinese case," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 47(3), pages 592-605.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:wsi:ijmpcx:v:25:y:2014:i:05:n:s0129183114400142. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Tai Tone Lim (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.worldscinet.com/ijmpc/ijmpc.shtml .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.