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Using detailed maps of science to identify potential collaborations

Boyack, Kevin W.

Research on the effects of collaboration in scientific research has been increasing in recent years. A variety of studies have been done at the institution and country level, many with an eye toward policy implications. However, the question of how to identify the most fruitful targets for future collaboration in high-performing areas of science has not been addressed. This paper presents a method for identifying targets for future collaboration between two institutions. The utility of the method is shown in two different applications: identifying specific potential collaborations at the author level between two institutions, and generating an index that can be used for strategic planning purposes. Identification of these potential collaborations is based on finding authors that belong to the same small paper-level community, using a paper-level map of science from the combined 2003 SCIE/SSCI/Proceedings databases containing nearly 1 million papers organized into 117,435 communities.