**3.3. Comparison between the categories demography and urban studies**

Comparing the number of journals indexed in JCR for the two categories analysed, it can be seen that *Demography* accounts for 68.4% of the number of journals for *Urban Studies* and its production only represents 47.36% of the second. In both categories, the percentages of multiauthored documents have very similar values with minor differences around l% (**Table 3**).

Throughout 2000 and 2016, the citation in *Urban Studies* has been increasing with an exponential behaviour (R2 = 0.9712) as well as the number of multi-authored articles (R2 = 0.8214). However, the category *Demography* behaves differently, the increase in citations has a logarithmic behaviour (R2 = 0577) and the number of articles written in collaboration represents a linear model (R2 = 0.9557) (**Figure 11**). This relationship between the citations received and the number of multi-authored documents in the two categories (*Urban studies: Pearson's coeff.* 0.892, *p* = .00; *Demography: Pearson's coeff.* = 0.709, *p* = .001) is in agreement with that found in other studies in which it has been shown that co-authorship has a tangible effect on the impact of the citations [41, 42].

It is remarkable that, for *Demography*, DC values have always been higher than 0.5; in addition, DC values are similar to those obtained for some other research fields of social sciences such as *basic psychology* between 1926 and 2005 [43]. There is a linear dependency between

**Figure 10.** General network for international collaboration in urban studies 2000–2016.

not collaborate with other countries in the sample. The country with most co-authorship with other countries in the world is the *USA*, collaborating with 81 countries. A total of 49.62% of

*France, Canada, the Netherlands, England and* the *USA* are the countries collaborating with more

The network depicted in **Figure 10** shows a general view over the country network for *Urban Studies* considering all the period. The density of the network is 0.09808612, higher than the one found for *Demography* which also indicated that the network is dense for social sciences.

the countries (66) have relationships with a maximum of 5 other countries.

**Figure 9.** Diachronic international collaboration in urban studies 2000–2016.

than 50 other countries in the category.

The average degree of the countries is 12.9473.

**Figure 8.** Citation by number of authors in urban studies 2000–2016.

76 Scientometrics


connection between countries. The category *Urban Studies* present less countries despite the

Collaboration and Citation Analysis Within Social Sciences: A Comparative Analysis…

http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.76732

79

Analysing DC values and citation in relation with international collaboration, it is found that the linear dependency between them is higher when international collaboration is involved, being the correlation coefficients 0.922 (*p* = .00) for *Urban studies* and 0.933 (*p* = .00) for

The USA is the most prolific country in both categories, whereas minority countries or countries of emerging economies are residual in *Demography* but relative important in the category *Urban Studies*. This could be explained by the fact that *Urban Studies* it indexed more journal

The ranking of the most productive and collaborating countries is clearly dominated by

It has been verified that, in the period 2000–2016, there is a predominance of documents written in multi-authorship in the categories *Demography* and *Urban Studies*. Likewise, the number of documents in collaboration has been increasing proportionally to the total production. The highest values in the collaboration indicators, DC, CI have been reached in the most recent years, showing a tendency to continue increasing. This increase in the number of citations in relation to the increase in the number of authors per article shows a similar pattern to those

Despite these results, the international collaboration is not so high, compared to author collaboration, which means that a great portion of the multi-authored documents are written by

The analysis of the scientific production of these two scientific categories in social sciences, *Urban studies* and *Demography*, has confirmed the findings of previous studies [44, 45] stating international collaboration in science is growing rapidly. This international collaboration has a correlation with the increase in the citation of multi-authored publications. The internationalisation of science in these two categories is largely due to the collaboration of researchers

found for other branches of knowledge closer to the hard sciences.

authors affiliated to institutions of the same country.

Alexander Maz-Machado\* and Noelia Jiménez-Fanjul \*Address all correspondence to: ma1mamaa@uco.es

from the USA, England and Canada.

University of Cordoba, Córdoba, Spain

**Author details**

fact that it involved more documents than *Demography*.

in the sample with a wider regional scope.

English countries in both categories.

*Demography*.

**4. Conclusions**

**Table 3.** Demography versus urban studies multi-authorship (2000–2016).

**Figure 11.** Citations and number of documents according to authorship.

DC values and citations which is found to be high for *Urban studies* category (*Pearson's coeff.* = 0.878, *p* = .00) and moderated for *Demography* category (*Pearson's coeff.* = 0.542, *p* = .025).

Focusing on the international collaboration, it is shown that both categories have similarities such as a high percentage of documents assigned to a single country. Moreover almost the half of the collaboration produced are no kept across time and frequently end in sporadic connection between countries. The category *Urban Studies* present less countries despite the fact that it involved more documents than *Demography*.

Analysing DC values and citation in relation with international collaboration, it is found that the linear dependency between them is higher when international collaboration is involved, being the correlation coefficients 0.922 (*p* = .00) for *Urban studies* and 0.933 (*p* = .00) for *Demography*.

The USA is the most prolific country in both categories, whereas minority countries or countries of emerging economies are residual in *Demography* but relative important in the category *Urban Studies*. This could be explained by the fact that *Urban Studies* it indexed more journal in the sample with a wider regional scope.

The ranking of the most productive and collaborating countries is clearly dominated by English countries in both categories.
