Visualization of collaboration in psychology: a case study of Iran

Abstract

Using bibliographic data extracted from the Web of Science (WoS) and social network analysis techniques, a network of co-authorship for psychology papers published by Iranian authors have been analyzed. The study covered the period from 1970 (the year WoS first included Iranian-authored papers) through the end of 2016. For this period, a total of 2,204 records were retrieved from WoS. Of this, 18.11% were single-authored papers, and 81.88% were multi-authored. The collaboration network has a density of 63%, which is above the average and shows that the network is relatively interconnected, with researchers collaborating on joint publications. Centrality closeness was 16.63%, and the co-authorship network betweenness centrality was 6.64%. The clustering coefficient was 0.82, and the centrality degree of network was 16.5%. Ghorbani, Zarrindast, and Moradi were the most productive and effective authors in the network.