A Study of MIS Scholar Community Development via a Collaboration Network Structures Analysis

The objective of this study is to apply collaborative networks to understanding the development process of the Management Information System (MIS) journals’ knowledge community. This research explores four phenomena: whether a co-author network depends on star collaborators, whether this network is a small world, the structural cohesion within the co-author network, and central scholars. We found that the MIS community has a small-world structure and high structural cohesion, so the MIS network is a dense cluster. Another finding was that a small number of researchers receive disproportionate recognition in MIS communities, indicating the presence of preferential attachment. This means that the MIS network contains clear star authors. Furthermore, we infer how a structural network affects knowledge diffusion and information diffusion. In addition, this study discusses changes in each journal’s central scholars to observe patterns of publication for each journal published by a private for-profit organization or sponsored by academic societies.