Co-authorship networks and institutional collaboration in works about Learning, Teaching and Education Leadership

Abstract

Bibliometric indicators, based on the statistical analysis of quantitative data from scientific literature, constitute currently in an essential tool for the study of research activity. In the last years, the use of bibliometric indicators as a complement to other scientific indicators to analyse the research situation of a country, its evolution in its time and their position in the international context, has been extended. Collaboration is a characteristic feature of modern science and it is very difficult to measure this aspect. Nevertheless, it is widely accepted to count the combined signatures done by two or more authors, with the analysis of the institutional affiliation mentions and geographical provenance of these authors, constitute a very reasonable and coherent way to estimate this collaboration. To know roughly the peculiarities of patterns of institutional collaboration of researchers working on issues of Learning, Teaching and Education Leadership, we have analysed the institutions where these researchers have worked. Two types of collaboration have been distinguished: national collaboration (between institutions from the same country) and international (between institutions from different countries), using as source of information the communications submitted at the World Conference on Learning, Teaching and Education Leadership (WCLTA) included in the database Web of Science (WoS). The programs used to build collaborative networks were Pajek and Ucinet.A remarkable characteristic is that even if 73% of the works done by co-authorship (done by 2 or more authors), only in 6.19% there was an institutional collaboration. Works done by institutional collaboration move from a range of 52 papers done by institutions in two different countries up to 4 works done by institutions from four countries. The countries with a higher rate of national collaboration are Turkey, Spain, Romania, Czech Republic and People’s R. China. Only 0.80% of the works were made in international institutional collaboration by researchers working in 14 different countries. Of all these country, Turkey, Spain, Italy and Portugal standout being the countries that have participated in a larger number of works carried out with researchers and institutions from other countries.

Key works: institutional collaboration, Learning, Teaching and Education Leadership, Collaboration networks, scientific production