Does Social Network Matter in Knowledge Output?

Abstract

This paper examines two important aspects of knowledge output: the degree of concentration in knowledge output and the nature of social network, taking the Economic and Political Weekly (EPW), a known scholarly periodical in the social sciences, as a case. We analyse the author data, looking at the frequency distribution of authors against the number of papers published and the social network of authors during the period 1996–2005. While the degree of concentration is assessed using a power law, namely Lotka’s law, the co-author data is transformed to a symmetric sociogram. The study covers 1,803 authors who published research articles in the EPW, including contributions by social scientists, policy professionals and scientists. It appears the progress in Indian social science has an apparent link with the history of EPW, accounting for a significant part of intellectual output and scholarly discourses in Indian social science. Taking cues from scholarly lineages, which investigate knowledge as a social phenomenon including the sociology of science, economics of knowledge and social network theory, we examine an important question: What is the degree of concentration prevailing in the EPW, during 1996–2005? Does the social network of authors, captured from the data, provide explanations for the degree of concentration? Our analysis shows that a high degree of the concentration of the authors and a relatively organised social network of authors coexist, indicating that the concentration in knowledge output, perhaps, is inherently linked to the structure.