An Agent-Based Modeling Framework to Study Scientific Collaboration Networks

摘要

Knowledge creation and diffusion exist in various kinds of social networks; however, the researches that combine the network-perspective and the knowledge-perspective are seldom reported. Based on the idea of combining the knowledge-system and complex-network aspects in investigating the mechanisms of knowledge diffusion and evolution of scientific collaboration networks, a modeling framework of scientific collaboration networks is discussed in the present paper. The generalized modeling framework may summarize the common features of the team-assembly-based scientific collaboration models, and such generalized framework and the corresponding agent-based modeling (ABM) tool may facilitate to develop a new model. Consequently, a generic ABM class library for using ABM to investigate the scientific collaboration networks is proposed. The generic class library that contains the functions of modeling, analysis, visualization as well as additional utility algorithms, is of great help to mitigate the model development workload and will facilitate the related work and provide a basis for the future work. The extension of the class library is also easy. The rationality of this class library is testified through two models.