Tourism Research Co-authorship Networks in China

The primary objective of this study is to explore the patterns of collaborations in the tourism research community in China. The study reveals that co-authorship is fast-growing over the past 10 years. Using a common binary undirectional network model, this paper explores some network characteristics of the tourism research co-authorship network in China (TRCNC) and discusses the significance of the results. The results show that the TRCNC is typically a complex network with scale-free and small-world properties. The analyses of density and centrality indicate loose collaborations and a clear "leading scholars" phenomenon in the TRCNC. Clique analysis shows that there are lots of academic teams in tourism research in China in which scholars collaborate closely but out of which the scientific collaboration is less. In the TRCNC, those whose networks bridge structural holes are all well-known scholars in China, which is beneficial for making academic factions flourish while maybe incurring sluggish academic innovation ability.