Study of the Effects of Co-Authorship Strategies on Scientific Productivity of Researchers in Distance Education: Application of social network analysis method and social capital paradigm

Due to the importance of the interdisciplinary investigations in the creation of knowledge, this research aims to analyze the structure of co-authored social network of researchers in the field of distance education and assess the impact of co-authored strategies (Isolate, Dyadic, Cohesion, Structural Holes, Independent, Complex and Middle)have been done on their scientific productivity.

The present study is an applied study of scientometrics using social network analysis technique (SNA) to analyze the co-authorship network. The statistical population of the study is the scientific productions of all researchers, of which at least one article has been indexed in the Web of Science citations (ISI)  in the field of distance education database from 1992 to 2017. After preparation the researcher's co-authorship matrix (AU), in order to extract the results, two types of software have been used: (a) Social Network Analysis Software (UCINET & Bibexcel), and (b) Statistical Analysis Software (SPSS).

The results show that there is a significant relationship between constraint, efficiency, network size and gender of researchers with researchers’ scientific productivity. Concerning the effect of the co-authorship strategies on the scientific productivity of researchers, the results indicate that different strategies have a different effect on the productivity of researchers in this field and between type of co-authorship strategies and scientific productivity there is a direct relationship. In this regard, researchers who have chosen structural holes and cohesion strategies as their publishing style have the highest levels of productivity, respectively. The results of regression analysis also showed that about 53% of the variability of criterion variable (productivity of researchers) is explained through the sum of predictive variables (constraint, efficiency, network size and gender of researchers).

Conclustion: 

The results indicate that scientific productivity of researchers is a function of their application of co-authorship strategies. Also, gender of researchers is a very important factor in researcher's scientific productivity in the co-authorship social network.