A publication by UF CTSI network science experts on the application of network intervention strategies to the problem of assembling cross-disciplinary scientific teams in academic institutions was published online March 19, 2015, in the journal Clinical and Translational Science.
In a social network analysis project supported by the UF CTSI, Chris McCarty, Ph.D. and Raffaele Vacca, Ph.D., used VIVO, a semantic-web research networking system, to extract the social network of scientific collaborations on publications and awarded grants across all UF colleges and departments. Drawing on the notion of network interventions, they designed an alteration program to add specific edges to the collaboration network, that is, to create specific collaborations between previously unconnected investigators. The missing collaborative links were identified by a number of network criteria to enhance desirable structural properties of individual positions or the network as a whole. They subsequently implemented an online survey (N = 103) that introduced the potential collaborators to each other through their VIVO profiles, and investigated their attitudes toward starting a project together.
The authors discuss the design of the intervention program, the network criteria adopted, and preliminary survey results. The results provide insight into the feasibility of intervention programs on scientific collaboration networks, as well as suggestions on the implementation of such programs to assemble cross-disciplinary scientific teams in CTSA institutions.
Publication
Vacca, R., McCarty, C., Conlon, M. and Nelson, D. R. (2015), Designing a CTSA-Based Social Network Intervention to Foster Cross-Disciplinary Team Science. Clinical and Translational Science. doi: 10.1111/cts.12267