The evolution and co-evolution of a primary care cancer research network: From academic social connection to research collaboration

Academic networks are expected to enhance scientific collaboration and thereby increase research outputs. However, little is known about whether and how the initial steps of getting to know other researchers translates into effective collaborations. In this paper, we investigate the evolution and co-evolution of an academic social network and a collaborative research network (using co-authorship as a proxy measure of the latter), and simultaneously examine the effect of individual researcher characteristics (e.g. gender, seniority or workplace) on their evolving relationships. We used longitudinal data from an international network in primary care cancer research: the CanTest Collaborative (CanTest). Surveys were distributed amongst CanTest researchers to map who knows who (the ‘academic social network’). Co-authorship relations were derived from Scopus (the ‘collaborative network’). Stochastic actor-oriented models were employed to investigate the evolution and co-evolution of both networks. Visualizing the development of the CanTest network revealed that researchers within CanTest get to know each other quickly and also start collaborating over time (evolution of the academic social network and collaborative network respectively). Results point to a stable and solid academic social network that is particularly encouraging towards more junior researchers; yet differing for male and female researchers (the effect of individual researcher characteristics). Moreover, although the academic social network and the research collaborations do not grow at the same pace, the benefit of creating academic social relationships to stimulate effective research collaboration is clearly demonstrated (co-evolution of both networks).