Looking at cross-institutional co-authorship networks is a useful way of seeing not only who we work with, but also where there may be gaps of interest.

I first looked at dentistry-related publications by UCSF researchers published in 2013, breaking out the institutions we co-authored with. And there we are, sitting pretty in the center of our universe, collaborating with major institutions in the US, Korea, Australia, Italy, Denmark, and more.

(Details: Institution node sizes indicate the total volume of dentistry-related articles published. Connecting line widths indicate the number of articles co-authored between two institutions. Distance between nodes indicates the tightness of co-authorship networks, and different sets of node colors help distinguish groups of institutions whose researchers frequently co-author together. Of 462 institutions that collaborated with UCSF researchers, we’re showing only 91 that had 10 or more cross-institutional articles in that time.)

View full-size visualization (PDF)

Then I looked at the total universe of dentistry-related publications published in 2013 (see below). Notice a difference? I have to admit that it took me a while to find UCSF in the mess of dots. (If you look at the full-size view, we’re in the medium blue section, next to the pinks.) Of course this says more about the sheer volume of research being published by universities all over the world, than about any lack of cross-institutionally collaborative spirit on our part; in fact I hid over 80% of the institutions in the first image to keep it readable, which accounts for a a good chunk of the difference. But the sheer weight of institutions from Europe, East Asia, and Latin America in this second image that aren’t there in the first is intriguing, and something I’m going to try digging into.

(Details: Institution node sizes indicate the total volume of dentistry-related articles published. Connecting line widths indicate the number of articles co-authored between two institutions. Distance between nodes indicates the tightness of co-authorship networks, and different sets of node colors help distinguish groups of institutions whose researchers frequently co-author together. Of 2,575 institutions that we found, we’re showing only 374 that had 10 or more cross-institutional articles in that time.)

View full-size visualization (PDF)

(And yes, I realize fully well that I’m probably looking at the wrong things here, privileging increasing the count of cross-institutional collaborations as an end in itself, avoiding any consideration of research quality, and giving greater visual weight to institutions that publish more, regardless of the size of the institution or the quality of work. Pretty pictures lie can hide lots of flaws. I hope you’ll bear with me as I publicly iterate through these topics, step by step, hopefully getting just a little bit less dumb every time.)

Additional uninteresting details: I searched Web of Science for dentistry-related articles published in 2013 (i.e. from January 1-December 5, 2013). I began by running a search for any articles published in 2013 matching a number of dentistry-related keywords (dental, dentistry, electrogalvanism, endodontics, jaw relation record, mouth rehabilitation, odontometry, oral, orthodontics, periodontics, prosthodontics, teeth, tooth), then filtered only those that matched the “DENTISTRY ORAL SURGERY MEDICINE” Web of Science category.