Skip to main content
Log in

Cognitive and Social Structure of the Elite Collaboration Network of Astrophysics: A Case Study on Shifting Network Structures

  • Published:
Minerva Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

Scientific collaboration can only be understood along the epistemic and cognitive grounding of scientific disciplines. New scientific discoveries in astrophysics led to a major restructuring of the elite network of astrophysics. To study the interplay of the epistemic grounding and the social network structure of a discipline, a mixed-methods approach is necessary. It combines scientometrics, quantitative network analysis and visualization tools with a qualitative network analysis approach. The centre of the international collaboration network of astrophysics is demarcated by identifying the 225 most productive astrophysicists. For the years 1998–1999 and 2001–2006 four co-authorship networks are constructed comprehending each a two year period. A visualization of the longitudinal network data gives first hints on the structural development of the network. The network of 2005–2006 is analyzed in depth. Based on cohesion analysis tools for network analysis, two main cores and three smaller ones are identified. Scientists in each core and additionally in structurally interesting positions are identified and 17 qualitative expert interviews are conducted with them. The visualization of the network of 2005–2006 is used in the interviews as a stimulus for the interviewees. An analysis of the three most often used keywords of the 225 astrophysicists is included and combined with the other data. The triangulation of these approaches shows that major epistemic changes in astrophysics, e.g. the discovery of the accelerating expansion of the universe, together with technical and organizational innovations, leads to a restructuring of the network of the discipline. The importance of a combination of qualitative and quantitative network analysis tools for the understanding of the interplay of cognitive and social structure in the sociology of science is substantiated.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Fig. 1
Fig. 2
Fig. 3
Fig. 4
Fig. 5

Similar content being viewed by others

Notes

  1. Saul Perlmutter, Brian P. Schmidt and Adam G. Riess were awarded with the Nobel Prize in 2011 for this scientific breakthrough.

  2. All excerpts from the interviews are highlighted in italics.

  3. The International Astronomical Union (IAU) has 9,662 professional astronomers as its members. In the year 2006, according to the Web of Science, 14,972 authors wrote at least one article in astrophysics.

  4. The proposal and selection process is described exemplary for the Institute de Radioastronomie Millimétrique (IRAM) by Grewing (2006).

  5. The success of these surveys is illustrated by their citation and publication counts. Until January 2007 more than 1,376 articles where published that mention the SDSS in their title (Kolb 2007).

  6. The SDSS and the 2df GRS were not the first sky surveys. One of several similar precursors is the Palomar Observatory Sky Survey. Although it was a cornerstone for the development of sky surveys, technical limitation and the analogous approach made this project much less automatic, standardized and transferable (Trimble 2009). Matthew Colles from the 2df GRS describes it as follows: There were several surveys that where forerunners, [] but 2df GRS and SDSS where the first surveys, to be really big enough, to get a statistically representative volume of the universe.

  7. There are many reasons to classify the subsequent changes in the epistemic groundings of the discipline as a major research breakthrough of normal science (Kuhn 1962). The discovery was unexpected, mainstream assumptions had to be overthrown, and a new cosmological baseline model was established. Nevertheless, the opposition against the discoveries was untypically low. This was mainly because the discovery was made by two independent research groups and corroborated fast by other observations. For a detailed account of the history of the breakthrough, see Goldsmith (2000) and Kirshner (2002).

  8. The respective article is Perlmutter et al. (September 1999): Measurements of Ω and Λ from 42 High-Redshift Supernovae.

  9. The respective article is Riess et al. (June 1999): Observational Evidence from Supernovae for an Accelerating Universe and a Cosmological Constant.

  10. In contrast to dark energy, the first hints towards the existence of dark matter were already visible and formulated by Fritz Zwicky in 1934. The gravitational forces of dark matter and baryonic matter slowed down the expansion of the universe in a first period after the big bang. Yet, with decreasing density of the universe, the dark energy component (which has a constant space-independent effect) outweighs the gravity and leads to an accelerating expansion (Kirshner 2002).

  11. The term industrialisation seems not to be totally precise here because it invokes hierarchical working relations, which is not necessarily the case in HEP.

  12. Simon White explains the success of the SDSS: It's because it covers a quarter of the entire sky and about half of the extra-galactic sky. The data is uniform and much better than anything else that was previously available. So, certainly they produced data of much higher quality, and it was all made publically available.

  13. From the original 250 authors, 25 authors who could not be identified or who had the same name were excluded. This is necessary because their publication productivity is overrated, if several authors publish under the same name and thus they do not belong to the most productive authors.

  14. The interviewees where asked if the interviews could be recorded and presented non-anonymously.

  15. For the comparison network of the years 1998–1999, the largest component comprehends 72.0% of the actors and the density is somewhat smaller. However, one has to bear in mind, that the most productive scientists were chosen on the basis of the period 2000–2006, so that the overall publication productivity for some authors may be lower for the years 1998–1999.

  16. The Watts-Strogatz clustering coefficient measures for an ego the fraction of ties in respect to all possible ties between his alteris at distance one, the cluster coefficient 2 at distance two (Batagelj and Mrvar 2010). Isolates were excluded from calculation.

  17. A calculation for the probability of a degree of 7 or more for one actor can be easily done with the formula for the binomial distribution \( 0.00 1 3 6^{x} 0.00 1 3 6^{( 2 2 4- x)} \left( {\begin{array}{*{20}c} { 2 2 4} \\ x \\ \end{array} } \right) \), where for x the respective degree values have to be inserted (7 or higher).

  18. Jens Hjorth: The clump is in the area of observational cosmology.

  19. It is believed that pulsars are highly magnetized, rotating neutron stars.

  20. See Andrea Possenti: The jewel under the pulsars we discovered, was just the double pulsar, discovered in the last years of the experiment.

  21. See Andrea Possenti: These people were the original network, from them the network as you see it started.

  22. Reinhard Schlickeiser, who later became member of the core himself states: This HEGRA collaboration was started by particle physicists, but there were just some astrophysicists involved, for example, Heinz Völk. He was the responsible editor for the Denkschrift Astrophysik by the German Research Foundation (DFG), where he gave a summary of the state of German astrophysics. Originally, Samorski and Stamm had claimed that they had found a source. And at that time the memorandum said, if we want to get to the bottom now, we must build more experiments. This has paved the way then for donors to give money for these experiments.

  23. Reinhard Schlickeiser states: There are, however, often theoretical collaborations between high-energy physicists and cosmology. These are the theoretical physicists who are interested in cosmology, rather than the experimental physicists. For us it's different, because we use practically the same detection technology for particle showers and analysis techniques that are similar to the particle experiments. That is, for us particle astrophysicists, we are just very much influenced by experimental particle physics. Cosmology is more relevant for physicists with a theoretical background.

  24. The group as such and the subfield of astrogeology, however, are larger than what is visible here.

  25. Maybe this is one commonality of these highly productive scientists, as Jens Hjorth puts it: They know how to play the game.

References

  • Batagelj, Vladimir, and Andrej Mrvar. 2010. Pajek Reference Manual: List of commands with short explanation version 2.00.

  • Batagelj, Vladimir, and Mat Jaž Zaverŝnik. 2002. Generalized cores. University of Ljubljana, Preprint 799: 1–8.

    Google Scholar 

  • Beaver, Donald D., and Richard Rosen. 1978. Studies in scientific collaboration. Part I. The professional origins of scientific co-authorship. Scientometrics 1: 65–84.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Becher, Tony, and Paul R. Trowler. 2001. Academic tribes and territories. Buckingham: Open University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Bonaccorsi, Andrea. 2007. Explaining poor performance of European science: Institutions versus policies. Science and Public Policy 34: 303–316.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Bonaccorsi, Andrea. 2008. Search regimes and the industrial dynamics of science. Minerva 46: 285–315.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Breiger, Ron L. 1976. Career attributes and network structure: A blockmodel study of a biomedical research speciality. American Sociological Review 41: 117–135.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Burt, Ronald S. 1992. Structural holes: The social structure of competition. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Chubin, Daryl. 1976. The conceptualisation of scientific specialities. Sociological Quarterly 17: 448–476.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Claspy, William P. 1998. Information use in astronomy. Library and information service in Astronomy III ASP Conference Series 153: 1–9.

    Google Scholar 

  • DFG. 2003. Status und Perspektiven der Astronomie in Deutschland 2003–2016. New Jersey: Wiley-VCH.

    Google Scholar 

  • Economist, The. 2009. The future of astronomy: Black-sky thinking. 1–2.

  • Edge, David O., and Michael Joseph Mulkay. 1976. Astronomy Transformed: The emergence of radio astronomy. New York: Wiley.

    Google Scholar 

  • Fernandez, Julio A. 1998. The transition from an individual science to a collective one: The case of astronomy. Scientometrics 42: 61–74.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Fuhse, Jan. 2009. The meaning structure of social networks. Sociological Theory 27: 51–73.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Goldsmith, Donald. 2000. The runaway universe: The race to find the future of the cosmos. New York: Basic Books.

    Google Scholar 

  • Gordon, Michael D. 1980. A critical reassessment of inferred relations between multiple authorship, scientific collaboration, the production of papers and their acceptance for publication. Scientometrics 2: 193–201.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Grewing, Michael. 2006. Selecting and scheduling observations at the IRAM observatories. In Organizations and strategies in astronomy, vol. 7, ed. André Heck, 203–226. Dordrecht: Springer.

    Google Scholar 

  • Grothkopf, Uta, Bruno Leibundgut, Duccio Macchetto, Juan P. Madrid, and Claus Leitherer. 2005. Comparison of science metrics among observatories. The ESO Messenger 119: 45–49.

    Google Scholar 

  • Hagstrom, Warren O. 1965. The scientific community. New York: Basic Books.

    Google Scholar 

  • Halliwell, Micheal John. 1982. Prestige allocation in astronomical research—a study of dysfunctional aspects. Pacific Sociological Review 25: 233–249.

    Google Scholar 

  • Heck, André. 2003. Astronomy professional communication. Astrophysics and Space science library 290: 203–220.

    Google Scholar 

  • Heidler, Richard, Regina von Görtz, and Karola Barnekow. 2010. Astrophysics research in Germany. In Disciplinary differences, governance and performance in universities and research organizations. Dordrecht: Springer.

  • Hohn, Hans-Willy. 1998. Kognitive Strukturen und Steuerungsprobleme der Forschung. Kernphysik und Informatik im Vergleich. Frankfurt. a. M./New York: Campus Verlag.

    Google Scholar 

  • Jansen, Dorothea. 1998. Hochtemperatursupraleitung—Herausforderungen für Forschung, Wirtschaft und Politik. Baden-Baden: Nomos Verlagsgesellschaft.

    Google Scholar 

  • Jansen, Dorothea, Regina von Görtz, and Richard Heidler. 2010. Knowledge production and the structure of collaboration networks in two scientific fields. Scientometrics 83: 219–241.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Kamada, Tomihisa, and Satoru Kawai. 1989. An algorithm for drawing general undirected graphs. Information Processing Letters 31: 7–15.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Kirshner, Robert P. 2002. The extravagant universe: Exploding stars, dark energy, and the accelerating cosmos. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Knoke, David, and James H. Kulinsky. 1982. Network analysis. Beverly Hills: Sage.

    Google Scholar 

  • Knorr-Cetina, Karin. 2002. Wissenskulturen. Frankfurt a. M.: Suhrkamp.

    Google Scholar 

  • Kolb, Rocky. 2007. A Thousand invisible cords binding astronomy and high-energy physics. Reports on Progress in Physics 70: 1583–1595.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Kuhn, Thomas S. 1957. The Copernican revolution. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Kuhn, Thomas S. 1962. The structure of scientific revolutions. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Lahav, Ofer. 2001. Large surveys in cosmology: The changing sociology. In Organizations, strategies in astronomy, vol. 2, ed. André Heck, 139–148. Dordrecht: Kluwer.

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  • Laudel, Grit, and Jochen Gläser. 2007. Interviewing scientists. Science, Technology & Innovation Studies 3: 91–111.

    Google Scholar 

  • Leydesdorff, Loet, and Ismael Rafols. 2009. A global map of science based on the ISI subject categories. Journal of the American Society for Information Science 60: 348–362.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Lorenz, Eckhard. 2009. Ground-based, very high energy gamma-ray astronomy—a tool for exploring the ultrarelativistic universe. Herbst-Workshop der AG Phil History and Philosophy of Astroparticle Physics 1–80.

  • Luhmann, Niklas. 1992. Die Wissenschaft der Gesellschaft. Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp.

    Google Scholar 

  • March, James G. 1991. Exploration and exploitation in organizational learning. Organization Science 2: 71–87.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • McCray, W.Patrick. 2000. Large telescopes and the moral economy of recent astronomy. Social Science Studies 30: 685–711.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • McPherson, Miller, Lynn Smith-Lovin, James M. Cook. 2001. Birds of a feather: Homophily in social networks. Annual Review of Sociology 27: 415–444.

    Google Scholar 

  • Meadows, Arthur J. 1974. Communication in science. London: Butterworths.

    Google Scholar 

  • Merton, Robert K. 1957. Priorities in scientific discovery: A chapter in the sociology of science. American Sociological Review 22: 635–659.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Merton, Robert K., and Elinor Barber. 2006. The travels and adventures of serendipity: A study in sociological semantics and the sociology of science. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Moody, James. 2004. The structure of a social science collaboration network: Disciplinary cohesion from 1963 to 1999. American Sociological Review 69: 213–238.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Moody, James, and Douglas White. 2003. Social cohesion and embeddedness: A hierarchical conception of social groups. American Sociological Review 68: 1–25.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Mullins, Nicholas C., Lowell L. Hargens, Pamela K. Hecht, and Edward L.Kick. 1977. The group structure of cocitation clusters. American Sociological Review 42: 552–562.

  • Newman, Mark E.J. 2001a. Scientific collaboration networks I. Network construction and fundamental results. Physical Review E 64: 1–8.

    Google Scholar 

  • Newman, Mark E.J. 2001b. Scientific collaboration networks II. Shortest paths, weighted networks, and centrality. Physical Review E 64: 1–7.

    Google Scholar 

  • Newman, Mark E.J. 2004. Co-authorship networks and patterns of scientific collaboration. Proceedings of the National Academy of Science 101: 5200–5205.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Pachucki, Mark A., and Ronald Breiger. 2010. Cultural holes: Beyond relationality in social networks and culture. Annual Review of Sociology 36: 205–224.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Perlmutter, Saul et al. 1999. Measurements of Ω and Λ from 42 High-Redshift Supernovae. The Astrophysical Journal 517: 565–586.

  • Riess, Adam G. et al. 1998. Observational evidence from supernovae for an accelerating universe and a cosmological constant. The Astronomical Journal 116: 1009–1038.

    Google Scholar 

  • Rowlands, Ian. 1999. Patterns of author cocitation in information policy: Evidence of social, collaborative and cognitive structure. Scientometrics 44: 533–546.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • SDSS. 1998. Last piece for advanced new telescope heads for the mountain. http://www.sdss.org/news/releases/19980211.spectro.html.

  • Seidmann, Stephen. 1983. Network structure and minimum degree. Social Networks 5: 269–287.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Sovacool, Benjamin. 2005. Falsification and demarcation in astronomy and cosmology. Bulletin of Science, Technology and Society 25: 53–62.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Stichweh, Rudolf. 1992. The sociology of scientific disciplines: On the Genesis and stability of the disciplinary structure of modern science. Science in Context 5: 3–15.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Stokes, T.D., and J.A. Hartley. 1989. Coauthorship, social structure and influence within specialities. Social Studies of Science 19: 101–125.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Trimble, Virginia. 2009. A generation of astronomical telescopes, their users and publications. Scientometrics 84: 21–34.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Völk, Heinz, Peter Biermann, and Hugo Fechtig. 1987. Denkschrift Astronomie. Wiley VCH.

  • White, Simon. 2007. Fundamentalist physics: Why dark energy is bad for astronomy. Reports on Progress in Physics 70: 883–897.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • White, Simon, and Rocky Kolb. 2007. The Toronto dark energy smackdown: A debate on the future direction of astronomy. http://hosting.epresence.tv/CITA/1/watch/29.aspx.

  • Whitley, Richard. 1972. Black boxism and the sociology of science: a discussion of the major developements in the field. In The Sociology of Science—The Sociological Review Monograph 18, University of Keele, 61–92.

  • Whitley, Richard. 2000. The intellectual and social organization of sciences. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Acknowledgments

I am grateful for the discussion of this paper with Dorothea Jansen, Thomas Heinze, Georg Krücken, Jan Fuhse and Richard Münch. They gave precious input to the paper, as well as an anonymous reviewer. I would like to thank Simon White and Wolfgang Rhode for their valuable advice concerning the astrophysical content. I gratefully acknowledge funding by the German Research Foundation (Ja 548/5-1, Ja 548/5-2, Ja 548/5-3).

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

Authors

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Richard Heidler.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Cite this article

Heidler, R. Cognitive and Social Structure of the Elite Collaboration Network of Astrophysics: A Case Study on Shifting Network Structures. Minerva 49, 461–488 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11024-011-9184-0

Download citation

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11024-011-9184-0

Keywords

Navigation