Co-Authorship Network Analysis in Constraint Programming Research

Abstract: The aim of this thesis was to study co-authorship in the constraint programming research community. This was done by conducting social network analysis (SNA) based on published scientific papers from the proceedings of the International Conference on Principles and Practice of Constraint Programming. Bibliographic data of the scientific literature was collected for the years 2018–2022 of the annual conference. For quantitative analysis, graph metrics were computed to study the properties and structure of the overall network, and also to study the attributes and characteristics of individual authors to be able to identify central actors of the community. Furthermore, graph layout algorithms were used for visualisation of the network. The computed metrics and the graphical visualisations enabled identifying collaboration patterns and behaviours within the studied field. The results of this study show that the most central actors of the community are mainly male and dominated by white organisations and countries. The results of the study also show that the vast majority of authors of the community collaborate with others in writing papers. However, due to the low density of the network there is opportunity and room for new collaboration patterns to take place within the research community.