The application of methods of social network analysis in bibliometrics and webometrics. Measures and tools

Abstract

The author describes in the article the use of social network analysis (SNA) methods in the field of bibliometrics and webometrics. Although the beginnings of the application of these methods in various fields took place several years ago, their adoption in bibliometrics and webometrics still has not achieved popularity. While in foreign publications attempts have been made to use SNA methods, e.g. for the analysis of co-authorship networks, the results of Polish national bibliometric studies boil down mainly to tabular forms. The first part of the article briefly introduces the reader to the world of SNA issues. Next, the author proposes possible interpretations of SNA measures in bibliometric applications. The article concludes with an example of the practical application of selected SNA measures used for data from the national bibliographic database, CYTBIN. The proposed visualizations make it possible to discover relationships in the data analysed which would be difficult, if not impossible, to be noticed in a traditional tabular forms.