Donald de B. Beaver

Studies in scientific collaboration

This essay investigates a number of the predictions of the theoretical view of scientific collaboration as a response to the professionalization of science: (1) that collaboration is most typically practiced by the scientific elite, or those who aspire to it, (2) that it increases individual research productivity, and (3) that it enhances the visibility of research to the larger scientific community. With respect to the first professionalized scientific community, that of Napolconic France, the study focusses on the research practices and careers of members of the Society of Arceuil, the Philomatic Society, and the First Class of the Institut, as they illustrate and confirm the accuracy of those predictions.

Studies in scientific collaboration: Part I. The professional origins of scientific co-authorship

From a historical and sociological perspective, this essay presents and develops the first comprehensive theory of scientific collaboration: collaborative scientific research, formally acknowledged by co-authorships of scientific papers, originated, developed, and continues to be practiced as a response to the professionalization of science. Following an overview of the origins and early history of collaboration in the 17th and 18th centuries, a study of the first professionalized scientific community, that of Napoleonic France, confirms that, as the theory predicts, collaboration is a typical research style associated with professionalization. In the early 19th century, virtually all joint research was performed by French scientists; collaborative research only appeared much later in England and Germany when they, too, underwent professionalization. That historical finding, which constitutes a puzzling anomaly for any other view of scientific teamwork, here conforms to theoretical expectation. Several other predictions of the theory are presented, to be taken-up in subsequent studies.

Reflections on Scientific Collaboration (and its study): Past, Present, and Future

Personal observations and reflections on scientific collaboration and its study, past, present, and future, containing new material on motives for collaboration, and on some of its salient features. Continuing methodological problems are singled out, together with suggestions for future research.

STUDIES IN SCIENTIFIC COLLABORATION PART III. PROFESSIONALIZATION AND THE NATURAL HISTORY OF MODERN SCIENTIFIC CO-AUTHORSHIP

A review of selected parameters of the growth of scientific collaboration over the last century provides further confirmation of the dependency of teamwork on the increasing professionalization of science. Analysis reveals significant inaccuracies in current views of the recency and prevalence of collaborative research, and affords a more correct picture of twentieth century developments. A change in the growth rate of the practice of scientific collaboration at about the time of World War I, and indications of associations of teamwork with financial support and research publication in leading journals are discussed. Characteristics of the natural history of scientific collaboration signify that collaboration reflects relationships of dependency within a hierarchically stratified professional community, and serves as a means of professional mobility. As such, it continues to fulfil its original functions.

Does collaborative research have greater epistemic authority

This paper presents qualitative philosophical, sociological, and historical arguments in favor of collaborative research having greater epistemic authority than research performed by individual scientists alone. Quantitatively, epistemic authority is predicted to correlate with citations, both in number, probability of citation, and length of citation history. Data from a preliminary longitudinal study of 33 researchers supports the predicted effects, and, despite the fallacy of asserting the consequent, is taken to confirm the hypothesis that collaborative research does in fact have greater epistemic authority.

Gender bias in journals of gender studies

The causes of gender bias favoring men in scientific and scholarly systems are complex and related to overall gender relationships in most of the countries of the world. An as yet unanswered question is whether in research publication gender bias is equally distributed over scientific disciplines and fields or if that bias reflects a closer relation to the subject matter. We expected less gender bias with respect to subject matter, and so analysed 14 journals of gender studies using several methods and indicators. The results confirm our expectation: the very high position of women in co-operation is striking; female scientists are relatively overrepresented as first authors in articles. Collaboration behaviour in gender studies differs from that of authors in PNAS. The pattern of gender studies reflects associations between authors of different productivity, or “masters” and “apprentices” but the PNAS pattern reflects associations between authors of roughly the same productivity, or “peers”. It would be interesting to extend the analysis of these three-dimensional collaboration patterns further, to see whether a similar characterization holds, what it might imply about the patterns of authorship in different areas, what those patterns might imply about the role of collaboration, and whether there are differences between females and males in collaboration patterns.

Age Structures of Scientific Collaboration in Chinese Computer Science

This paper is a scientometric study of the age structure of scientific collaboration in Chinese computer science. Analysis reveals some special age structures in scientific collaboration in Chinese computer science. Most collaborations are composed of scientists younger than thirty-six (Younger) or older than fifty (Elder). For two-dimensional collaboration formed by first and second authors, Younger-Elder and Younger-Younger are the predominant age structures. For three-dimensional collaboration formed by first, second and third authors, Younger-Younger-Elder and Younger-Younger-Younger are the most important age structures. Collaboration between two authors older than 38 amounts to only 6.4 percent of all two-person collaborations. Collaboration between two middle-aged scientists is seldom seen.Why do such types of age structure in Chinese computer science exist? We suggest a tentative explanation based on analyses of the age composition of all authors, the age distributions of the authors in different ranks, and the name-ordering of authors in articles written by professors and their students.

Marketing the Monster: Advertising Computer Technology

Interpreting the rich and striking blend of technical, intellectual, economic, social, and cultural information in advertisements of computer technology reveals how popular understanding and perceptions of the meaning of computers changed between 1950 and 1980. The studys findings contribute to the historical understanding of the social diffusion of the technology in society; its methodology illustrates the historiographic strengths and weaknesses of using advertisements as historical documents.

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.