Study of Changes in the Structure of Collaborative Research

Social network methods are used to track changes in the structure of research collaboration over time. The submission of a scientific research proposals as a measure of an instance of collaboration is the basis of this research. Proposals represent a more complete view into collaboration activities than publications because the product studied does not depend on approval from exogenous reviewers. Proposals capture intent to collaborate and can be used as earlier indicators of collaboration than published work. For this study, a single proposal submitted for external funding by more than one investigator is an indicator of collaboration. Information in proposal archives for a 20 year period (2000-2020) is used to link each proposal to all investigators that collaborated to produce and submit the proposal to generate collaboration networks for all participating investigators for each year. Investigator attributes, including disciplinary background, rank, type of appointment, race, ethnicity and sex are used to test hypothesis about collaboration network structure related to inclusion and interdisciplinarity over time.