Coauthor Network Analysis of Journal of Agricultural Education Articles from 2008-2017

Abstract

The social capital of collaboration is a critical part of the research process. While AAAE supports collaboration and inclusivity, analysis has not occurred for what collaborations are occurring. This study addressed collaboration between researchers via a social network analysis of coauthorship in the Journal of Agricultural Education from 2008 to 2017. There were 587 articles published in that time frame with 593 unique authors. The number of articles published annually and number of authors per article increased during the 10-year period. The majority of authors only published one article in the time frame analyzed. After excluding authors who never collaborated on an article, a social network of 582 coauthors was analyzed. There was a general tendency for the most prolific authors to also be the most connected, though there were some outliers. Of note, the majority of the most connected authors received their terminal degrees from one of three institutions. The majority of the most prolific coauthor pairs were advisor-advisee pairings, and the remainder were individuals who had worked at the same institution during much of the study’s time frame. A prolific coauthor pairing was not necessarily indicative of a connection that was important for bridging authors across the network.