Bülent Özel

Collaboration structure and knowledge diffusion in Turkish management academia

This article proposes a conceptual framework to study diffusion of knowledge via collaborative social interactions. The framework primes deliberation on (i) nature of knowledg, (ii) chain of knowledge process, and (iii) modes of knowledge transfer while examining mechanisms of knowledge diffusion and collaboration structure. Within such a differentiation scheme while information is considered as a form of filtered data within a context of relevancies, knowledge is considered as a systematically processed information that is bound to individual or collective actions and praxis. The framework is applied employing an empirical research method based on meta-network analysis. The examplary case traces how management sciences related knowledge is diffused and what collaboration structures are exhibited by Turkish management academia from 1920s until 2008. Results from knowledge diffusion models which have been devised and tested in this study hint that management knowledge within local publications follows patterns of information diffusion rather than patterns of knowledge transfer found elsewhere. On the other hand, it is seen that cognitive demand of publishing in citation indexed global journals have given way to cohesive collaborating teams as mean of collaborative knowledge production and transfer.

Co-authorship pair distribution patterns by gender

This paper examines impact of gender both on publication productivity and on patterns of scientific collaborations in social sciences in Turkey. The research is based on bibliographic data on national level publications in Turkey. It consists of 7,835 papers written by 6,738 scientists. The findings suggest that (1) there are gender differences at publication productivity, participation, presence and contribution; that (2) there are significantly different tendencies at keeping established co-authorship ties for inter-gender and intra-gender pairs; that (3) there are significant regularities exhibited by coauthor pairs based on each partner author’s publication productivity and findings further show that (4) regularities are different for inter-gender and intra-gender co-authorships. This study contributes to literature by exemplifying an integrated approach to better examine role of gender in scientific collaborations. In addition to descriptive social network analysis methods, it exploits and adopts parametric models from the literature: (1) Social Gestalt theory, a model based on bi-variate distributions of co-author pairs’ frequencies; (2) Lotka’s power law distribution on publication productivity of single authors; (3) Power law distributions of co-author pairs’ frequencies.

Individual cognitive structures and collaboration patterns in academia

This article, elaborating on mutuality of knowledge and social structure theory borrowed from sociology of knowledge literature, where knowledge is perceived as an essentially social and societal category, develops a coherent research framework which relates cognitive structure and the collaboration patterns into an integrated socio-knowledge analysis of a given scientific community. The framework extends co-word analysis combining it with social network analysis. The framework is enhanced by introducing a novel model. The new model maps actors from co-authorship networks into a strategic diagram of scientists. The mapping is based on cohesiveness and pervasiveness of issues each author has published in the field. The exemplary longitudinal case from Turkey covers scientific publication activities in Turkish management academia spanning the years from 1922 until 2008. It is seen that, while within local community diffusion of management knowledge is lead by academicians with certain socio-cognitive properties, academicians publishing at international arena do not show any significantly differing socio-cognitive properties, instead, they are merely embedded in strongly connected groups. Leading academicians within local community, however, exhibit a common socio-cognitive structure relative to the rest of the community. They have more social ties and more diversified disseminated knowledge compared to the rest. Knowledge they disseminate is distinct compared to their peers in the network, they hold certain part of their knowledge exclusively, thus knowledge-wise they don’t resemble the rest, but they keep a level of common knowledge with the rest of the community.

Who is collaborating with whom? Part I. Mathematical model and methods for empirical testing

There are two versions in the literature of counting co-author pairs. Whereas the first version leads to a two-dimensional (2-D) power function distribution; the other version shows three-dimensional (3-D) graphs, totally rotatable around and their shapes are visible in space from all possible points of view. As a result, these new 3-D computer graphs, called “Social Gestalts” deliver more comprehensive information about social network structures than simple 2-D power function distributions. The mathematical model of Social Gestalts and the corresponding methods for the 3-D visualization and animation of collaboration networks are presented in Part I of this paper. Fundamental findings in psychology/sociology and physics are used as a basis for the development of this model.

Who is collaborating with whom? Part II. Application of the methods to male and to female networks

The theoretical approach of the mathematical model of Social Gestalts and the corresponding methods for the 3-D visualization and animation of collaboration networks are presented in Part I. The application of these new methods to male and female networks is shown in Part II. After regression analysis the visualized Social Gestalts are rather identically with the corresponding empirical distributions (R2>0.99). The structures of female co-authorship networks differ markedly from the structures of the male co-authorship networks. For female co-author pairs’ networks, accentuation of productivity dissimilarities of the pairs is becoming visible but on the contrary, for male co-author pairs’ networks, accentuation of productivity similarities of the pairs is expressed.

Link and Node Analysis of Gender Based Collaborations in Turkish Social Sciences

This paper examines impact of gender both on publication productivity and on patterns of scientific collaborations in social sciences in Turkey. Bibliographic data on local publications in Turkey is used. It consists of 7835 papers written by 6738 scientists. Findings suggest that (1) there are gender differences at publication productivity, participation, presence and contribution, that (2) there are significantly different tendencies at keeping established co-authorship ties for inter-gender and intra-gender pairs, that (3) there are significant gender differences at positions of individuals in the network structure. It is seen that while female scientists are seen to be embedded in cliques more often than males, males are more active at bridging different components in the network. This study exemplifies an integrated approach to better examine role of gender in scientific collaborations.This paper examines impact of gender both on publication productivity and on patterns of scientific collaborations in social sciences in Turkey. Bibliographic data on local publications in Turkey is used. It consists of 7835 papers written by 6738 scientists. Findings suggest that (1) there are gender differences at publication productivity, participation, presence and contribution, that (2) there are significantly different tendencies at keeping established co-authorship ties for inter-gender and intra-gender pairs, that (3) there are significant gender differences at positions of individuals in the network structure. It is seen that while female scientists are seen to be embedded in cliques more often than males, males are more active at bridging different components in the network. This study exemplifies an integrated approach to better examine role of gender in scientific collaborations.

The 7th International Conference on Webometrics, Informetrics and Scientometrics & 12th COLLNET Meeting

The 7th International Conference on Webometrics, Informetrics and Scientometrics & 12th COLLNET Meeting took place in Istanbul, Turkey on 20–23 September 2011. This joint meeting was organised under the auspices of the international organisation COLLNET and by the Computer Science Department of the Istanbul Bilgi University with the participation of TÜBITAK ULAKBIM (The Turkish Academic Network and Information Centre) and Istanbul Bilgi University Library and Information Center. The event was hosted by the Istanbul Bilgi University. The previous COLLNET meetings, part of which were jointly organised with other events, such as since 8 years with the international conferences on Webometrics, Informetrics and Scientometrics (WIS), had been held in Berlin (Germany) in 2000, New Delhi (India) in 2001, Sydney (Australia) in 2001, Beijing (China) in 2003, Roorkee (India) in 2004, Stockholm (Sweden) in 2005, Nancy (France) in 2006, New Delhi (India) in 2007, Berlin (Germany) in 2008, Dalian (China) in 2009 and Mysore (India) in 2010. The conference attracted about 120 participants from 25 countries. At the conference, about 75 oral presentations and 20 poster presentations were delivered. For the present special issue of Scientometrics we have selected 3 keynotes by Pudovkin, Kretschmer, Stegmann et al. on research evaluation (Part I and II), by Beaver on ‘‘quantity and quality’’,

Organization of Internet Standards

In this study we look at a body of standards documents in RFCs(Request For Comments) of IETF (Internet Engineering Task Force). The cross references between these documents form a network. Approaches from social network analysis are deployed to assess centrality of artifacts in this network and identify cohesive subgroups and levels of cohesion. Our results demonstrate major groups centered around key standard tracks, and application of network metrics reflect different levels of cohesion for these groups. As application of these techniques in such domains is unusual, possible uses in open source projects for strategizing are discussed.

Forking the Commons: Developmental Tensions and Evolutionary Patterns in Open Source Software

Open source software (OSS) presents opportunities and challenges for developers to exploit its commons based licensing regime by creating specializations of a software technology to address plurality of goals and priorities. By ‘forking’ a new branch of development separate from the main project, development diverges into a path in order to relieve tensions related to specialization, which later encounters new tensions. In this study, we first classify forces and patterns within this divergence process. Such tensions may stem from a variety of sources including internal power conflicts, emergence of new environmental niches such as demand for specialized uses of same software, or differences along stability vs. development speed trade-off. We then present an evolutionary model which combines divergence options available to resolve tensions, and how further tensions emerge. In developing this model we attempt to define open software evolution at the level of systems of software, rather than at individual software project level.

Examining Korean political figures using co-word analysis in agreement with facial expressions in posted self-images

This study combines online image content analysis and text content analysis of the homepages of political figures, specifically South Korean National Assembly members. The study attempts to explore the relations between (1) the types of facial expressions present, using the official photographs on the members’ homepages, (2) the textual contents of self-posted public profiles, again using members’ homepages, (3) members’ socio-political-demographic attributes, and (4) their web visibility and link counts on popular websites. In a previous study, we examined the emotional content contained in facial pictures of South Korean politicians. The results suggested significant patterns between facial expressions, web visibility and the socio-demographic attributes of politicians. In this paper, we further explore the textual contents of members’ homepages using co-word analysis techniques to ascertain to what extent textual contents are in agreement with facial expressions in posted self-images. In addition, having employed co-word analysis we attempt to derive a strategic diagram of the 18th National Assembly based on clusters of key phrases and words posted on the members’ homepages. This approach allows us to investigate central and peripheral clusters of keywords and their distribution considering members’ socio-political-demographic attributes.