Social Networks and Its Uses in Collaborative Strategies

Abstract

In this paper, there are three policy scenarios that are explored and discussed. The first scenario comes from a dataset where little information is known about individual nodes and connection weights are placed based on the economic theory of increasing or constant returns. The second dataset was derived by taking a group of academic researchers (without any knowledge beyond co authorship alliances) working on a joint venture and exploring what combined research ventures would be most beneficial for future research outputs. More information concerning individual nodes and connections is given in this dataset, but the weights on connections are still developed according to rules of economic theory. The final set of data is developed by viewing the same co-authorship alliances as in the second scenario, but instead the data is examined more thoroughly and more accurate maps of authors connection weights are generated.