The impact of individual collaborative activities on knowledge creation and transmission

Collaboration is a major factor in the knowledge and innovation creation in emerging science-driven industries where the technology is rapidly changing and constantly evolving, such as nanotechnology. The objective of this work is to investigate the role of individual scientists and their collaborations in enhancing the knowledge flows, and consequently the scientific production. The methodology involves two main phases. First, the data on all the nanotechnology journal publications in Canada was extracted from the SCOPUS database to create the co-authorship network, and then employ statistical data mining techniques to analyze the scientists’ research performance and partnership history. Also, a questionnaire was sent directly to the researchers selected from our database seeking the predominant properties that make a scientist sufficiently attractive to be selected as a research partner. In the second phase, an agent-based model using Netlogo has been developed to study the network in its dynamic context where several factors could be controlled. It was found that scientists in centralized positions in such networks have a considerable positive impact on the knowledge flows, while loyalty and strong connections within a dense local research group negatively affect the knowledge transmission. Star scientists appear to play a substitutive role in the network and are selected when the usual collaborators, i.e., most famous, and trustable partners are scarce or missing.