The feature list for HistCite describes ability to analyze coauthor relationships, but this is not detailed in the help documentation. What can the program do in this regard? Can it graph networks of relationships between coauthors?
There is no specific tool that is specialized to this function but if we use the different tools that are available, we should be able to find what you are looking for.
First thing to keep in mind is the character of the collection. If you want to analyze the relationship between author X and Y. Get all the papers by X and then use the "author" analysis page and find Y. Those papers will be the set of papers by both authors. You can then mark these papers and export them. You can create a new HistCite of that subset collection and analyze those papers separately.
You can graph any subset of papers in any collection you have, if you mark those papers first. From the graphs page, there is an option to use the marked list instead of the LCS/GCS criteria.
More may be possible, but you will have to be more specific about what you need.
Thanks. Here is a first step in providing more detail so that you can have an idea of what I am trying to do to see if it is feasible. I have a group of about 50 names and I want to construct a network like map showing which has coauthored with the others. So the number of interactions is large.
HistCite is not specifically designed to do this type of analysis. It would be possible to do, but it would require a lot of work on your part.
The "network" maps that HistCite creates show papers as nodes and citations as links between them. It sounds like you want authors as nodes and coauthorship as links. It would be possible to create a customized data set to do this, but it would require a lot of work. You would have to first analyze each author pair separately. Then you would have to create a customized data set. Instead of each record standing for a paper, you would want each record standing for an author.
I would not use HistCite for this type of project unless as a last resort.
Have you heard of NetDraw (or Pajek)? These are more generalized programs for visualizing networks. Some users have used HistCite to prepare data from the Web of Science for use in NetDraw and Pajek. This might be worth looking into.
coauthor relationships
Posted - 01/03/2008 : 20:22:37
