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Multi-level Co-authorship Network Analysis on Interdisciplinarity: A Case Study on the Complexity Science Community

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Unifying Themes in Complex Systems X (ICCS 2020)

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Abstract

Determining interdisciplinarity has become crucial as the importance of such collaboration is increasingly appreciated. We aim to demonstrate the interdisciplinarity of the complexity science community through a multi-level co-authorship network analysis. We conduct a multi-level analysis to avoid the pitfalls between multidisciplinarity and interdisciplinarity. We build a weighted co-authorship network and label each author’s disciplines based on their self-declared interests available in the Google Scholar account. Our work uses an applied form of Shannon entropy to measure the diversity of disciplines. While showing the multidisciplinarity through measuring the diversity at the global level, we utilize a community detection algorithm and show the interdisciplinarity via a group level analysis. We also conduct an individual level analysis by measuring the neighbor diversity for each node and comparing it with the author’s degree centrality. Our research shows that the diversity of disciplines in the complexity science community comes from the interdisciplinary characteristics at the group-level and individual-level analysis. The model can be applied to other heterogeneous communities to determine how truly interdisciplinary they are.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. College of Liberal Studies, Seoul National University, Seoul, Republic of Korea

    Robin Wooyeong Na

  2. Graduate School of Convergence Science and Technology, Seoul National University, Seoul, Republic of Korea

    Bongwon Suh

Authors
  1. Robin Wooyeong Na
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  2. Bongwon Suh
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Bongwon Suh .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. New England Complex Systems Institute and University of Massachusetts, Cambridge, MA, USA

    Dan Braha

  2. State University of Campinas, Sao Paulo, Brazil

    Marcus A. M. de Aguiar

  3. Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico, Mexico, Distrito Federal, Mexico

    Carlos Gershenson

  4. New England Complex Systems Institute, Cambridge, MA, USA

    Alfredo J. Morales

  5. Boston University, Boston, MA, USA

    Les Kaufman

  6. Tufts Medical Center, Boston, MA, USA

    Elena N. Naumova

  7. University of Cincinnati, Cincinnati, OH, USA

    Ali A. Minai

  8. New England Complex Systems Institute, Cambridge, MA, USA

    Yaneer Bar-Yam

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Na, R.W., Suh, B. (2021). Multi-level Co-authorship Network Analysis on Interdisciplinarity: A Case Study on the Complexity Science Community. In: Braha, D., et al. Unifying Themes in Complex Systems X. ICCS 2020. Springer Proceedings in Complexity. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-67318-5_26

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