Understanding Researchers Collaboration in eParticipation using Social Network Analysis

Abstract

Over the past years electronic participation (eParticipation) became a political priority worldwide. Consequently, research on the field has dramatically grown. However, eParticipation is still an unconsolidated research area that lacks generally agreed upon definitions, research disciplines, methods and boundaries. The aim of this paper is to contribute to the establishment of the eParticipation identity by investigating the scientific collaborations in the domain. The study of the nature of academic collaboration reveals the structure and the intellectual roots of the research community and the most influential authors. The approach followed in this paper includes the construction of the co-authorship network and the calculation of the social network analysis (SNA) metrics that describe the nature of the collaboration. The results revealed that eParticipation is a rather active academic field in the last decade including a high degree of collaboration and a core network of very influential researchers.