MaScoNet: A Web-Based Application for Mapping Formal and Informal Scientific Collaborations

We present MaScoNet, a web-based application designed to collect ego-centered network data through a structured questionnaire, tailored to gather scientific collaboration data. MaScoNet enables researchers to examine how informal and formal forms of scientific collaboration influence scholars’ performance. When collecting such data, it is necessary to identify both the focal individuals (egos) and their associated network members (alters). Alters can be identified by using name-generator questions—where participants list their collaborators—or by having the researcher pre-select alters. Both methods may introduce biases, such as recall bias or researcher subjectivity, and MaScoNet offers flexibility to choose the most suitable approach based on study objectives. The questionnaire in MaScoNet is structured into two parts. The first part consists of questions designed to gather data on the types of co-authorship relationships, both formal and informal, that have led to producing scientific outputs between the respondent and each of their co-authors. For each selected co-author, the respondent is presented with a separate page containing these questions. The second part assesses the extent of informal relationships with colleagues who have not co-authored any publications. Furthermore, in the first section of MaScoNet, there is a feature that allows the researcher to provide a list of scientific articles co-authored by the respondent and each identified co-author. By incorporating tailored questions based on these articles, the researcher can analyze a two-mode network that complements the ego-alter network. In this two-mode network, one set of nodes represents the scientific articles, while the other set represents their authors. If multiple articles are listed, the respondent can select more than one article when answering a particular question. This feature offers deeper insights into collaborative structures and their influence on scholarly performance.