Temporal and social network analysis of the co-authorship networks from papers from the National Institute of Physics

Abstract

In this work, we analyze the temporal evolution of the co-authorship networks of the small scientific community of the National Institute of Physics (NIP). Papers authored by at least one author affiliated with the NIP since its founding year in 1983 to 2016 were used. In particular, we examine the growth of the number of authors and the properties of the co-authorship network such as clustering coefficient, degree distribution, and centrality. The rank frequency distributions begin to show Zipf's law behavior as time progresses, suggesting that the natural growth of the network makes it evolve as in other, bigger scientific communities reported in literature. We observe increasing trends for the clustering coefficient and the degree of each individual in the network, and a decrease in network density, primarily due to the increased number of individuals and papers. The study benefits from the fact that the NIP is relatively young and small, such that its growth and dynamics can be observed from the very beginning.