About this Research Topic
In this age of big science, collaboration is increasingly becoming a main characteristic of scientific activity. Scientific collaboration plays an important role in implementing major scientific breakthroughs, improving research efficiency, achieving knowledge innovation and sharing of scientific and technological resources. Given these capabilities made possible by the internet, open access and social media, scientific collaboration has changed and acquired many different configurations, shapes, models and methods; it also faces many new challenges. In this scenario, many questions need to be considered carefully and addressed, such as: What are the characteristics of scientific collaboration in the digital age? What are the factors that influence it? What are the changes in its evolution? Are there development trends? What is the nature of the contributions of authors in collaborative research? This research theme aims to discuss novel approaches and new insights to uncover the characteristics of research networks and bring new perspectives to understand the nature of, and trends in scientific collaboration.
The research theme can broadly be described in three dimensions: the subject of the collaboration networks (e.g. scholar, journal, institution and country); demographic and spatial distribution characteristics of the collaboration networks (e.g. gender, discipline, institutions); and temporal distribution characteristics of the collaboration networks (e.g. evolution, migration).
Potential topics under the research theme include, but are not limited to:
- Interdisciplinary research collaboration networks
- Gender and its relationship in research collaboration networks
- Scholarly migration in research collaboration networks
- Scientific collaboration networks in emerging and peripheral countries
- Collaboration networks in the social sciences and humanities
- Authors’ contributions to collaborative papers
- Geographic patterns in research collaboration
- Scholarly genealogy in the evolution of research networks
Keywords: Scientific Collaboration, Collaboration Networks, Interdisciplinary, Gender Collaboration, Scholar Migration, Author Contribution, Collaboration Characteristics, Collaboration Evolution
Important Note: All contributions to this Research Topic must be within the scope of the section and journal to which they are submitted, as defined in their mission statements. Frontiers reserves the right to guide an out-of-scope manuscript to a more suitable section or journal at any stage of peer review.
