An in-depth longitudinal analysis of mixing patterns in a small scientific collaboration network

Many investigations of scientific collaboration are based on large-scale statistical analyses of networks constructed from bibliographic repositories. These investigations often rely on a wealth of bibliographic data, but very little or no other information about the individuals in the network, and thus, fail to illustate the broader social and academic landscape in which collaboration takes place. In this article, we perform an in-depth longitudinal analysis of a small-scale network of scientific collaboration (N = 291) constructed from the bibliographic record of a research center involved in the development and application of sensor network technologies. We perform a preliminary analysis of selected structural properties of the network, computing its range, configuration and topology. We then support our preliminary statistical analysis with an in-depth temporal investigation of the assortativity mixing of these node characteristics: academic department, affiliation, position, and country of origin of the individuals in the network. Our qualitative analysis of mixing patterns offers clues as to the nature of the scientific community being modeled in relation to its organizational, disciplinary, institutional, and international arrangements of collaboration.