An Analysis of the Structure and Evolution of the Distance Education Research Area Community in Terms of Coauthorships

This article aims at characterizing the research community of Distance Education (DE) with respect to coauthorship, a special kind of collaboration among researchers, according to publications of 11 relevant DE journals. This article identified who the central researchers are, the topological proper...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:International journal of distance education technologies 2018-04, Vol.16 (2), p.65-79
Main Authors: Gomes, Rodrigo Richard, Barbosa, Marcelo Werneck
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Co authorship
Collaborative Writing
Communities of Practice
Community Relations
Distance Education
Distance learning
Educational Technology
Evolution
Network Analysis
Nontraditional Education
Online Courses
Periodicals
Researchers
Social network analysis
Social Networks
Technology Uses in Education
Writing for Publication
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Summary:This article aims at characterizing the research community of Distance Education (DE) with respect to coauthorship, a special kind of collaboration among researchers, according to publications of 11 relevant DE journals. This article identified who the central researchers are, the topological properties of the coauthorship networks analyzed, the coauthorship patterns of each journal and the evolution of the DE community in the last 30 years. In order to achieve these goals, Social Network Analysis (SNA) was used, deriving centrality metrics, which depict the importance of researchers in the networks. This study found out that researchers who publish more papers are not necessarily the ones considered more central according to SNA. Besides, promising researchers, those linked to central researchers and are considered more likely to coauthor papers in the near future. Different coauthorship patterns among journals are described. Finally, a steep increase in the number of publications and coauthorships in the last decades was observed.
ISSN:1539-3100
1539-3119
DOI:10.4018/IJDET.2018040105