Correlation between Impact Factor and productivity with centrality measures in journals of Information science: A social network analysis

This research examines the association between co-authorship network centrality (degree, closeness, betweenness, eigenvector, Bonacich flow betweenness) and productivity of Information science researchers. The research population includes all those researchers who have published at least one record in one of the twenty journals of Information Science which has an impact factor of 0.635 as a minimum from the years 1996 to 2010. By using social network analyses, this study examines information science researchers’ outputs during 1996-2011 in ISI Web of Science database. In general co-authorship network of these researchers was analyzed by UCINET6 software. Results showed that there is a significant correlation between Journal Impact Factor (JIF) and all centrality measures except closeness centrality at P= 0.001. Results also showed that there is a significant correlation between productivity of authors and all centrality measures scores at P≥ 0.001. Also, regression reports direct relationship of degree, closeness and flow betweenness and inverse relationship of betweenness as well as Eigen vector centrality on productivity of researchers.

Co-authorship; Network centrality; Scientific productivity; Social network analysis, Journal Impact Factor