2025/10/30 by Fan, Xiaoguang, Boucher, Aurelien
#China #FOS: Sociology #Inequality and Stratification #Social and Behavioral Sciences #Sociologist #Sociology #Sociology of Culture #US.
paper · doi:10.17605/osf.io/gzvdu
Social scientists have extensively studied the relationships between co-authorship, schol- arly productivity, and reputation, but few studies have examined these phenomena in the eld of contemporary China studies. This article aims to ll this gap by investigating the impact of co-author networks on productivity and citations. It draws its conclusions by analyzing 2784 articles published between 2011 and 2021 in nine major international journals dedicated to contemporary China. The ndings reveal unique trends among specialists on contemporary China, characterized by low average productivity and a broad publication distribution across disciplinary journals. The study also demonstrates a positive correlation between co-authorship, network connections, productivity, and citations, emphasizing the role of mentoring strategies and extra-mural collaborations in enhancing productivity. Furthermore, the formation of“invisible colleges” within the main networks is observed, in uencing the literature and citation landscape. However, these invisible colleges are not monopolizing publishing opportunities if com- pared with other elds of knowledge.