Mapping the collaboration networks of biomedical research in Southeast Asia
- Published
- Accepted
- Subject Areas
- Statistics, Computational Science
- Keywords
- co-authorship networks, bibliometrics, social network analysis, network centrality
- Copyright
- © 2015 Malbas
- Licence
- This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, reproduction and adaptation in any medium and for any purpose provided that it is properly attributed. For attribution, the original author(s), title, publication source (PeerJ PrePrints) and either DOI or URL of the article must be cited.
- Cite this article
- 2015. Mapping the collaboration networks of biomedical research in Southeast Asia. PeerJ PrePrints 3:e936v1 https://doi.org/10.7287/peerj.preprints.936v1
Abstract
Collaboration forms an integral aspect of global research endeavors, where co-authorship derived from bibliographic records provides the building block for mapping research collaboration networks. Bibliometric techniques and social network analysis tools were applied to measure the scope and depth of collaboration in biomedical research in Southeast Asia during the period 2005-2009. In particular, centrality scores and draw network maps were calculated for both country and institutional levels of aggregation. In the field of biomedical research, Thailand and Singapore are the most productive and collaborative countries in Southeast Asia during the period studied. Using network analysis, there was strong correlation of research productivity by a country or institution with the number of collaboration and its group influence, and weak correlation with maximal data flow within the research network. There were specific clusters of connected institutions in subnetworks for neoplasm, diabetes, and tuberculosis research. Given the observed frequency of regional collaboration in Southeast Asia, in comparison to foreign collaboration, it is argued that increasing the number of collaborations within Southeast Asia will help advance the region’s efforts on domestic and regional health issues.
Author Comment
This paper will be submitted to PeerJ for review. Initial feedback to this preprint may be coursed through the correspondence indicated.