Analysing Scientific Networks Through Co-Authorship

Co-authorship is one of the most tangible and well documented forms of scientific collaboration. Almost every aspect of scientific collaboration networks can be reliably tracked by analysing co-authorship networks by bibliometric methods. In the present study, scientific collaboration is considered both at individual and national levels, with special focus given to multinational collaborations. Both literature data and original results witnessed a dramatic quantitative and structural change in the last decades of the 20th century. The changes, to great extent, can be attributed to the universal tendencies of globalisation and the political restructuring of Europe. The standards and, particularly, the…