As it approached its fifth year, the CTSI partnered with Social Network Analysis (SNA) experts in the UF Bureau of Economic and Business Research to assess its impact on collaboration at UF and to explore how SNA might be used to strengthen UF’s scientific collaboration network.
Christopher McCarty, Ph.D., and Raffaele Vacca, Ph.D., examined the CTSI’s effect on UF’s scientific collaboration network from 2008-2012. Their analysis found the CTSI network of investigators increased in size and as a proportion of the total UF network; the CTSI network increased cohesion and diversity of the UF network; and the CTSI pilot award program created new collaborations and brought new researchers into the network.
Next steps for the CTSI collaboration include using SNA to design a network intervention for increasing scientific collaboration in targeted areas over the next five years. The collaboration also is creating opportunities for other areas of the university to conduct SNA as well as training opportunities for researchers interested in SNA, including a new graduate course (syllabus for ANG 5420: Social Network Analysis).
Read more about the collaboration: