Methodological Tracks to Study Research Collaboration Networks in Higher Education
Theory and Method in Higher Education Research
ISBN: 978-1-78769-278-7, eISBN: 978-1-78769-277-0
Publication date: 12 November 2018
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.
Keywords
Acknowledgements
Acknowledgements
We would like to thank the collaboration of Dra. Olga del Pillar Vásquez Cruz, Universidad Nacional de Colombia, MSArq. Ernesto Dominguez, Universidad de la República, Uruguay, Dra. Elizeth Gonzaga dos Santos Lima, Universidade do Estado do Mato Grosso, Dra. Maria Elly Herz Genro and the research group InovAval, Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil. Without them, the case studies would not be possible and we would not reach and follow the fourth methodological track of the research.
We would like to thank Dr. Jeroen Huisman and Dr. Malcolm Tight, the editors, for the invitation to contribute to the volume and their kind advices during the writing process.
We are grateful to Dr. Rosemary Deem from Royal Holloway-University of London for the final text revision and gentle suggestions.
We would like to thank CNPQ, the National Council of Scientific and Technological Development, Brazilian funding agency for the research support.
Citation
Leite, D., Pinho, I., Caregnato, C.E. and Miorando, B.S. (2018), "Methodological Tracks to Study Research Collaboration Networks in Higher Education", Theory and Method in Higher Education Research (Theory and Method in Higher Education Research, Vol. 4), Emerald Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 125-143. https://doi.org/10.1108/S2056-375220180000004009
Publisher
:Emerald Publishing Limited
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