Methodological Tracks to Study Research Collaboration Networks in Higher Education

Abstract

Abstract This chapter presents the strategy employed to develop a methodology to evaluate research collaboration networks in a higher education context. The research design comprised four successive tracks. We understand these methodological tracks as the tactics employed to organise available means to accomplish an objective. In the first track, we selected the key subjects, the ego networks and the network leaders to be analysed. In the second track, we visualised networks through graphs. In the third track, the statements of the subjects about formed networks were pursued, based on interviews. In the fourth track, case studies were researched and described. The study included qualitative and quantitative data to uncover the interactive processes of doing collaborative research inside a network. The methodology was useful to obtain visual understanding of the networks of co-authorial relations, quantitative and qualitative markers to be used in participatory evaluation of collaborative research networks, as well as an extended view of the life cycles of collaborative research networks. The main contribution of the chapter is to show a sequence of cross-disciplinary methodological steps allowing to understand different types of relations inside research network.