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Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to investigate whether a sparse and relatively small giant component (GC) will capture highly productive authors. Design/methodology/approach – The author used a geographically dispersed data set involving authors in the field of economics in ten countries in Southeast Asia and applied social network analysis methods to investigate the structure and dynamics of GCs. Findings – Results reveal that a GC, characterized by both low density and small size, can still capture a significant percentage (68 per cent of the top 25) of the most productive authors. There seems to be a topological backing for this occurrence. The number of direct connections (or “degree”) in the GC was correlated with research productivity, such that high-degree authors were almost twice as productive as low-degree authors. It is probable that productive authors having higher than average degrees may be the cause of the formation of the GC. The author hypothesize that irrespective of its size or sparseness, GCs in co-authorship networks may still represent the seat of main intellectual activity in the network. Originality/value – This is one of the first studies to quantitatively analyse the ability of a co-authorship-based less-prominent GC to capture prominent authors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose -- The purpose of this paper is to attempt to provide a review of the growing literature on co-authorship networks and the research gaps that may be investigated for future studies in this field. Design/methodology/approach -- The existing literature on co-authorship networks was identified, evaluated and interpreted. Narrative review style was followed. Findings -- Co-authorship, a proxy of research collaboration, is a key mechanism that links different sets of talent to produce a research output. Co-authorship could also be seen from the perspective of social networks. An in-depth analysis of such knowledge networks provides an opportunity to investigate its structure. Patterns of these relationships could reveal, for example, the mechanism that shapes our scientific community. The study provides a review of the expanding literature on co-authorship networks. Originality/value -- This is one of the first comprehensive reviews of network-based studies on co-authorship. The field is fast evolving, opening new gaps for potential research. The study identifies some of these gaps. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to compute and analyze the topological properties of co-authorship network formed between earth scientists in India. As a case study, the authors evaluate bibliographic data of authors who have contributed research articles in the Journal of the Geological Society of India, a premier earth science journal in India. Design/methodology/approach – Research articles totaling 3,903 records from 1970 to 2011 were harvested from the ISI Web of Science SCI database and analyzed using Social Network Analysis. Findings – The author productivity in terms of number of papers published followed Lotka's law with β=2.1027. A dense giant component was detected that spanned 73 percent of the network with a density of 0.0017 and clustering coefficient of 0.631, suggesting high level of knowledge diffusion and a rapid flow of information and creativity in this network. Local metrics were calculated using degree, betweenness and closeness centralities. A strong correlation was seen between degree and author productivity (number of works) and betweenness centrality and author productivity, suggesting that author's number of connections and controlling “in-between” position in the network may be providing the authors’ with the knowledge and resources to be more productive. Originality/value – The impact of human actions on the earth systems is a hot topic of research in India. This is one of the first works that investigates co-authorship networks of Indian earth science researchers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]