Evolution of the coauthorship network

Abstract

We collect empirical data for a coauthorship network of scientists working on the subject of complex networks for 103 months, starting from the initial point of its evolution. Such a data set enables us to study the evolution of a complex network from the seed. Based on the statistics of evolution rates of various types of edges obtained from the empirical data, we find that the edge-strength enhancement, cluster growth, and creation of new clusters are dominant processes occurring in the evolution. Based on this finding, we construct a simple network evolution model and compare its degree distribution with the empirical one, finding that they are in reasonable agreement with each other.