title: Collaboration patterns in the German political science co-authorship network.
abstract: Research on social processes in the production of scientific output suggests that the collective research agenda of a discipline is influenced by its structural features, such as "invisible colleges" or "groups of collaborators" as well as academic "stars" that are embedded in, or connect, these research groups. Based on an encompassing dataset that takes into account multiple publication types including journals and chapters in edited volumes, we analyze the complete co-authorship network of all 1,339 researchers in German political science. Through the use of consensus graph clustering techniques and descriptive centrality measures, we identify the ten largest research clusters, their research topics, and the most central researchers who act as bridges and connect these clusters. We also aggregate the findings at the level of research organizations and consider the inter-university co-authorship network. The findings indicate that German political science is structured by multiple overlapping research clusters with a dominance of the subfields of international relations, comparative politics and political sociology. A small set of well-connected universities takes leading roles in these informal research groups.
authors.affiliation: School of Social and Political Sciences, University of Glasgow, Glasgow, United Kingdom.
authors.forename: Philip
authors.identifier: http://orcid.org/0000-0002-6834-5705
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Leifeld
authors.affiliation: Geschwister Scholl Institute of Political Science, Ludwig-Maximilians-University (LMU Munich), Munich, Germany.
authors.forename: Sandra
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Wankmüller
authors.affiliation: Department of Politics and Public Administration, University of Konstanz, Konstanz, Germany.
authors.forename: Valentin T Z
authors.initials: VT
authors.lastname: Berger
authors.affiliation: Institute of Political Science, University of Bern, Bern, Switzerland.|Oeschger Center for Climate Change Research, University of Bern, Bern, Switzerland.|Department of Environmental Social Sciences, Eawag, Dübendorf, Switzerland.
authors.forename: Karin
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Ingold
authors.affiliation: Department of Politics and Public Administration, University of Konstanz, Konstanz, Germany.
authors.forename: Christiane
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Steiner
mesh_terms: D001319:Authorship; D003299:Cooperative Behavior; D005858:Germany; D011057:Politics