This article examines the structure of Slovenian disciplinary co-authorship networks' stability in two time periods (1991-2000 and 2001-2010). The goal of the article is to analyses differences in the stability and size of groups of researchers that co-author with each other (core research groups) formed in disciplines from the natural and technical sciences on one hand and the social sciences and humanities on the other. The cores were obtained by a pre-specified blockmodeling procedure assuming a multi-cores—semi-periphery—periphery structure. The stability of the obtained cores was measured with the Modified Adjusted Rand Index. The assumed structure was confirmed in all analyzed disciplines. The average size of the cores obtained is higher in the second time period and the average core size is greater in the natural and technical sciences than in the social sciences and humanities. There are no differences in average core stability between the natural and technical sciences and the social sciences and humanities when the stability of cores is defined through Modified Adjusted Rand Index while the differences emerges when the stability of cores is defined by the splitting of cores and not also by the percentage of researchers who left the cores.
COBISS.SI-ID: 33687901
The chapter focuses on the question of how successful was Slovenia as a small EU-Member State in exploiting all the opportunities for developing a modern research, development and innovation (RD&I) system when it joined the European Union. Namely, after a 25 year period of transition, the RD&I system in Slovenia still suffers from many of the same structural problems that were present already at the beginning of the 1990s, i.e., immediately after the political turnaround from the one- party communist system to a market and pluralistic political system. We primarily look at the role of institutional mechanisms in modern societies that are necessary to perform the important social role of mediation and harmonization of interests and preferences between the scientific, economic, political and other social subsystems. There are still many obstacles that prevent a full realization of such mechanisms in Slovenia. The political, economic and scientific elites are either not aware or are not willing to recognize that without radical changes and reforms in these mechanisms, there will be no dynamic and innovative socio-economic progress in the country.
COBISS.SI-ID: 34609757
Social network data usually contain different types of errors. One of them is missing data due to actor non-response. This can seriously jeopardize the results of analyses if not appropriately treated. The impact of missing data may be more severe in valued networks where not only the presence of a tie is recorded, but also its magnitude or strength. Blockmodeling is a technique for delineating network structure. We focus on an indirect approach suitable for valued networks. Little is known about the sensitivity of valued networks to different types of measurement errors. As it is reasonable to expect that blockmodeling, with its positional outcomes, could be vulnerable to the presence of non-respondents, such errors require treatment. We examine the impacts of seven actor non-response treatments on the positions obtained when indirect blockmodeling is used. The start point for our simulation are networks whose structure is known. Three structures were considered: cohesive subgroups, core-periphery, and hierarchy. The results show that the number of non-respondents, the type of underlying blockmodel structure, and the employed treatment all have an impact on the determined partitions of actors in complex ways. Recommendations for best practices are provided.
COBISS.SI-ID: 34233181