Analyzing co-authoring communities of tourism research collaboration

Research on collaboration relationships among researchers assists in understanding scientific information dissemination. Network analysis has been used in many studies on collaboration. However, understanding the co-authoring communities in collaboration networks and identifying their key researchers generally remain unexplored, although these insights can lead to an improved comprehension of collaboration relationships. The current study discovers and analyzes co-authoring communities in the collaboration networks of researchers in tourism research. Results indicate that productivities within co-authoring communities are high because of dense collaboration relationships. We also observe that location may be one of the formation reasons of co-authoring communities. Key researchers who are globally and locally important can be further identified by introducing the community centrality measure. The network robustness test demonstrates the effectiveness of this measure.