Structure and evolution of co-authorship network in an interdisciplinary research field
The structure and evolution of co-authorship networks have been extensively studied in literature. However, the studies on the co-authorship network in a specific interdisciplinary field may be complementary to the mainstream ofexisting works. In this paper, the interdisciplinary field of evolution of cooperation, which has been prevalent in the last decades as a promising scientific frontier, is analyzed by extracting its co-authorship network mainly from Web of Science. The results show that the development of this field is characterized by the growth of a giant component of its collaboration network. Originally formed by assembling a few local clusters, the giant component has gradually evolved from a small cluster to a structure of chained-communities, and then to a small-world structure. Through examining the degree distributions and analyzing the vulnerability, we uncover that the giant component is comprised of the elite, the middle-class and the grassroots, with respect to the nodes degrees and their functions in structuring the giant component. Furthermore, the elite and themiddle-class constitute a robust cohesive-core, which underpins the modular network of the giant component. The overall results of this work may illuminate more endeavors on the collaboration network in other interdisciplinary fields.
co-authorship network evolution of cooperation giant component small world cohesive core