For my recent master's dissertation, I studied the UK National Ecosystem Assessment (UK NEA), a government-initiated scientific assessment of the UK's ecosystems, their value to society, and policy options for their protection. One of the biggest challenges when researching an assessment of this type is keeping track of the large number of contributors involved. In the case of the UK NEA, the contributors numbered upwards of 500 people. In a process where some authors contributed to multiple chapters, keeping track of everyone and their relationships to each other is difficult.
To handle this complex situation, I used Gephi to create a network map which presents the UK NEA's authors as a social network held together by co-authorship. Using author data from the Assessment itself, I was able to create a map which included all 403 people who were listed as authors for at least one of the UK NEA's chapters.
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| UK NEA Authorship Network Map |
The image above is based on a very simple foundation. Each circle represents one of the UK NEA's authors. A connection between two authors means that they co-authored at least one chapter together. In the center of the network, purple connections identify authors who co-authored the high-level Synthesis for Policy Makers. Magenta connections represent co-authorship of the Assessment's introductory chapters, while green connections represent habitat-based chapters that focused on specific types of ecosystems such as woodlands or freshwaters. Light green connections (found at the bottom of the image) are related to ecosystem services chapters, and gold connections signify country-focused chapters (in this case the four constituent countries of the United Kingdom: England, Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland). Finally, blue connections are related to ecosystem service valuation and scenario building (the valuation aspect of the UK NEA was the main focus of my dissertation research).
So what insights, if any, does this network map provide? First, the map confirms - and visualizes - a number of features of the UK NEA authorship network that I noticed during my research. For example, many of the authors were involved in only one chapter of the assessment, and these groups form dense, easy-to-distinguish clusters within the network. Connecting these clusters are a relatively small number of multi-chapter authors, as can be seen here in this close-up:
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| Author Clusters with Two "Connector" Authors (Center) |
Second, the map helps illustrate the relationship between chapters written mainly by ecologists (green connections) and other chapters largely written by economists and social scientists (blue connections). Some ecology-focused chapters were relatively closely connected to the valuation chapters because they included ecologists or economists who also worked on ecosystem service valuation (Clusters A and B below). Other ecology chapters were not connected directly to the valuation chapters (Cluster C). Why the difference? This topic was not my focus, but it could be an interesting one to explore.
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| Ecology Chapters and Their Connection to Valuation Chapters |
However, I believe that these network maps may be most useful for identifying effective research strategies. For example, if a researcher was studying interdisciplinarity in scientific assessments, they could use the network map above to identify the UK NEA authors who connected different chapters. They could then request an interview with these "connector" authors in order to learn more about the process of exchange both between chapters and between academic disciplines.
So, is creating a network map worth the time investment? (around 10-15 hours for the UK NEA map above) The answer depends on the research questions being pursued. But given the (relatively) easy learning curve for network software like Gephi, network visualization could be a valuable addition to researchers' intellectual toolkit.
