Authorship Patterns in Computer Science Research in the Philippines

We studied patterns of authorship in computer science (CS) research in the Philippines by using data mining and graph theory techniques on archives of scientific papers presented in the Philippine Computer Science Congresses from 2000 to 2010 involving 326 papers written by 605 authors. We inferred from these archives various graphs namely, a paper–author bipartite graph, a co-authorship graph, and two mixing graphs. Our results show that the scientific articles by Filipino computer scientists were generated at a rate of 33 papers per year, while the papers were written by an average of 2.64 authors (maximum=13). The frequency distribution of the number of authors per paper follows a power-law with a power of φ = −2.04 (R = 0.71). The number of Filipino CS researchers increases at an annual rate of 60 new scientists. The researchers have written an average of 1.42 papers (maximum=20) and have collaborated with 3.70 other computer scientists (maximum=54). The frequency distribution of the number of papers per author follows a power law with φ = −1.88 (R = 0.83). This distribution closely agrees with Lotka’s law of scientific productivity having φ ≈ −2. The number of co-authors per author also follows a power-law with φ = −1.65 (R = 0.80). These results suggest that most CS papers in the country were written by scientists who prefer to work alone or at most in small groups. These also suggest that few papers were written by scientists who were involved in large collaboration efforts. The productivity of the Philippines’ CS researchers, as measured by their number of papers, is positively correlated with their participation in collaborative research efforts, as measured by their number of co-authors (Pearson r = 0.7425). The Filipino CS scientists follow a low dissortative mixing when choosing a collaborator either in terms of the collaborator’s number of papers (r = −0.1015), or its ∗http://www.ics.uplb.edu.ph/jppabico number of co-authors (r = −0.0398). This means that a Filipino CS researcher with high numbers of papers and co-authors chooses a collaborator whose numbers of papers and co-authors are low.