Bibliometric Analysis of Collaboration Network and the Role of Research Station in Antarctic Science

Abstract

Due to the large scale of Antarctic science, scientific collaboration is required for conducting scientific research. In this study, we attempted to investigate collaboration network and the role of research station in Antarctic science based on bibliometric data from 1995 to 2014. We confirmed that geographical proximity tends to be important for scientific collaboration by employing community detection in the network. This result raises the question about what the role of research station in Antarctica is. We tried to reveal its role by focusing on five countries, Belgium, China, Czech Republic, India, and Korea that constructed new research stations during the last decade. Relative growth rate, a value to measure the growth of publications, didn't differ much around the construction period compared to those in other periods for these countries except Belgium. However, we found eographical keywords emerged around the construction for all five countries. These keywords were utilized to observe national research activities in Antarctica. They show where countries started to be concerned about after the construction.