  Applying the concept of triadic closure to coauthorship networks means that
scholars are likely to publish a joint paper if they have previously coauthored
with the same people. Prior research has identified moderate to high (20% to
40%) closure rates; suggesting that this mechanism is a reasonable explanation
for tie formation between future coauthors. We show how calculating triadic
closure based on prior operationalizations of closure, namely Newman's measure
for one-mode networks (NCC) and Opsahl's measure for two-mode networks (OCC),
may lead to higher amounts of closure as compared to measuring closure over
time via a metric that we introduce and test in this paper. Based on empirical
experiments using four large-scale, longitudinal datasets, we find a lower
bound of about 1~3% closure rates and an upper bound of about 4~7%. These
results motivate research on new explanatory factors for the formation of
coauthorship links.
