Collaboration Structures of Russian Sociologists: Network Analysis of Publications in the Web of Science Database

The study focuses on the characteristics of collaborations of Russian sociologists and the identification of groups of related authors in modern Russian sociology. The objectives of the study are: systematization of the main theoretical and methodological approaches to the study of collaborations in science; description of the characteristics of publication activity and collaboration of authors; description of the structure of collaboration networks of Russian sociologists and identification of groups of related authors. The data analysis is based on 7,080 scientific articles on sociology by 5,678 Russian authors in the Web of Science Core Collection database for the period from 1992 to 2024. The following trends are noted: a trend towards an increase in the number of articles during the period under review, an increase in the share of co-authored works, an increase in the share of works published in foreign journals. The identified trends may indicate an intensification of interactions within the scientific community. The analysis of the productivity and collaboration of authors reveals common publication strategies of authors: with zero or minimal level of participation of co-authors, as well as with an average level of participation or a level slightly above average. The analysis of collaboration networks shows that 68% of authors are related to the subject of this work — these authors have co-authors. At the same time, only 19% of them make up the main component — the largest subnetwork in which all authors are reachable for each other. The rest of the network is divided into small groups. Based on the analysis of the distribution of components, Hypothesis No. 1 is confirmed: the most common structural form of collaboration of sociologists is a dyad. The use of several algorithms of network analysis allows us to identify groups of related authors, which include authors from the Federal Research Center of the Russian Academy of Sciences, National Research University Higher School of Economics, St. Petersburg State University, European University at St. Petersburg and other organizations. As a result of the application of blockmodeling, the structure of relations between groups is revealed: in the structure of the sociological community is of the "core-periphery" type. When identifying groups of authors in different ways, intersections are found: 9% of authors appear when identifying subnetworks for three methods of group analysis. Thus, Hypothesis No. 2 is confirmed that the structure of the sociological community contains a set of authors that form the basis of groups identified on various grounds. It is assumed that authors from this set form the "basis" of various "invisible colleges" and can act as important elements of the network and influence the field of Russian sociology.