The Development Roadmap of the EWG-DSS Collab-Net Project: A Social Network Perspective of DSS Research Collaboration in Europe

It is well-known that social network analysis has been playing an increasingly important role in evaluating scientific research collaboration within publication databases. This paper presents the development roadmap of the EWG-DSS Collab-Net Project of the EURO Working Group on Decision Support Systems. The current project serves as a means for a social network perspective of research collaboration within the Decision Support Systems community in Europe. The major key variable used for the network analysis is co-authorship. The network was designed to show the collaboration dynamics among the researchers, members of the EWG-DSS group. Newly in this paper is the specification of the ontology model to be used within the collaboration research network, stating its benefits to the project. The study provides a clear understanding of the community’s strengths, in terms of key players, strong links and well researched topic areas; as well as weaknesses such as weak links and isolated researchers. The main goal of the project’s network analysis is to allow researchers to seek opportunities for future collaboration within the DSS communities. Results achieved so far are briefly described within the paper.