Find authors and collaborators
In short: Build a Co-authorship map to see who publishes together: its clusters are research groups, and its units can be Authors, Organizations or Countries. Use citation-based author maps to see whose work is most influential. Save the people you want to follow with Save author, let Suggest authors propose more, and look anyone up on SciVerse.
Before you start
- Create a project with a corpus on your topic. See Run a literature review.
- Co-authorship maps use author lists, so they work straight away. Citation, co-citation and coupling maps of authors need reference data first. See Empty maps and reference data.
Which map answers which people question?
| Your question (type it in the Map queries bar) | Map type | Unit |
|---|---|---|
| "Who are the most influential authors in this area?" | Citation, Co-citation or Co-authorship | Authors / Cited Authors |
| "Whose work is this field built on?" | Co-citation | Cited Authors |
| "Which sub-communities exist, and who bridges them?" | Co-authorship | Authors |
| "Who connects otherwise separate groups in this field?" | Co-authorship | Authors |
| "Which researchers are rising rather than established?" | Co-authorship or Bibliographic Coupling | Authors |
| "Who could review or examine this work?" | Citation or Co-authorship | Authors |
| "Which institutions should I collaborate with?" | Co-authorship | Organizations |
| "Which institutions work on this but never together?" | Bibliographic Coupling | Organizations |
| "Which countries lead this research area?" | Co-authorship | Countries |
Browse more in the Query Bank under Authors & Groups and Institutions & Places.
1. Build a co-authorship map
From a question: type a question from the table into the Map queries bar, click Map this question, pick an option and click Explore with map.
In Expert Mode, for full control:
- Open the Research Maps tab and open Expert Mode.
- Enter a Map Name and set Map Type to Co-authorship.
- Open Co-authorship Settings and choose a Unit of Analysis: Author, Organization or Country.
- For authors, turn on Merge name variants. It treats "J. Smith", "John Smith" and "J Smith" as one author.
- Optional: under Thresholds, set Author cut-off (per publication), for example 25. This skips publications with very many authors, such as large consortium publications, which can distort the network.
- Optional: set Min publications so only authors with enough publications appear.
- Click Plot Map.
Details: Expert Mode · Map types
2. Read the network
- Each cluster is a Research Group (authors), Institutional Network (organizations) or Regional Cluster (countries). Edges are collaborations.
- Click a node to see its co-authors, publications and metrics.
- Change what node size shows under Node Config → Weightage:
| Metric | Use it to find |
|---|---|
| Publications | The most prolific authors or institutions |
| Degree (links) | Those with the most distinct collaborators |
| Betweenness centrality | Brokers who connect otherwise separate groups |
| Eigenvector centrality | People connected to other well-connected people |
- Turn on Timeline to see who is newer to the field. On co-authorship maps, authors appear by the average year of their publications.
Details: Reading a map · Timeline mode
3. Save the people you want to follow
- Click an author node on any map.
- Click Save author. The button changes to Author saved.
- Open the Library tab and click Authors to see your saved list with Name, ORCID, Publications and Saved date.
- From the list, use View publications in corpus, RIF it or Remove.
SciNodes also saves an author automatically when you write a note about them, add them to Research in Formation or ask the assistant about them. Click Undo autosave if you didn't mean to. You can turn autosave off in User Preferences.
Details: Saved authors and venues · Preferences
4. Get author suggestions
- In Library → Authors, click Suggest authors.
- Choose how many to suggest (1 to 200, default 50). Suggestions are based on real catalog publication counts.
- Tick the ones to keep.
Suggestions use your weekly credits. See Credits and usage.
5. Look people up on SciVerse
SciVerse lets you browse the wider scholarly record:
- Authors lists "Most-cited authors". Organizations lists "Most-cited organizations".
- An author's page shows their citation count, publication count, topic tags and publications.
- To find an author's publications on a topic, search, then use Refine by → Author → Include.
- Signed in, click Add to SciNodes on a publication to add it to a project.
Details: Browsing authors, organizations and venues · Add to SciNodes
Tips
- Merging nodes by hand on the map works on keyword and term co-occurrence maps only. For author name variants, use Merge name variants in Expert Mode.
- To shortlist reviewers, ask "Who could review or examine this work?", then check that candidates aren't your own co-authors on the co-authorship map.
- Use Chat about this … on a research group cluster to have a research assistant summarize what the group works on.
- Ready to work with someone in SciNodes? Invite them to your project. See Work with your team.
FAQ
How do I find potential collaborators in my field?
Build a Co-authorship map of Organizations or Authors, or ask "Which institutions should I collaborate with?". Look for groups close to yours that you aren't linked to yet, and save them with Save author.
How do I fix the same author appearing under different names?
In Expert Mode, open Co-authorship Settings and turn on Merge name variants before you plot the map. It groups names by last name and initials.
What is the difference between a co-authorship map and a co-citation map of authors?
A co-authorship map links authors who published together. A co-citation map of Cited Authors links authors whose publications are cited together, which shows schools of thought rather than working relationships.
Can I see an author's full publication list?
In SciNodes, View publications in corpus shows the author's publications in your project. For their other publications, open their page on SciVerse.