Co-authorship and Scientific Productivity In the Port Studies A Social Network Analysis

The study focuses on building the co-authorship network of port research and analysing its structural properties through several social network indicators, in order to measure the strength of collaborative ties. Based on a total number of 1,266 papers published from 1967 to 2018, the paper investigates authorship patterns and author productivity, followed by a presentation of co-authorship by periods — a discussion of main component and core authors by periods. Findings show the existence of different typologies of author-led research network, characterised by a hierarchy of relationships centred on team leaders. Conclusions and future research directions are provided in order to investigate strategic citation behaviours in academia, such as self-citations and citation clubs.