Measuring Personal Networks and Their Relationship with Scientific Production

The analysis of social networks has remained a crucial and yet understudied aspect of the efforts to measure
Triple Helix linkages. The Triple Helix model aims to explain, among other aspects of knowledge-based
societies, “the current research system in its social context” (Etzkowitz and Leydesdorff 2000:109). This
paper develops a novel approach to study the research system from the perspective of the individual, through
the analysis of the relationships among researchers, and between them and other social actors. We develop a
new set of techniques and show how they can be applied to the study of a specific case (a group of academics
within a university department). We analyse their informal social networks and show how a relationship exists
between the characteristics of an individual’s network of social links and his or her research output.