An extended study of collaboration networks of Levantine biomedical researchers

A collaboration (or a co-authorship) network (ColNet) consists of researchers as nodes with the edges connecting two researchers if they have coauthored at least one paper together. In this work, we study the ColNet of biomedical researchers in the Levant region. In addition to performing the standard measures of social network analysis on the constructed network, we propose new metrics (for the stability of research groups) to help us explore the patterns of highly productive researchers. Analyzing the constructed network reveals that local researchers are shifting from working individually or with non-local collaborators to working within relatively large groups of local collaborators. Moreover, we find that highly productive researchers enjoy a certain balance between maintaining stable relationship with their previous collaborators and engaging in new projects with new collaborators.