>>Atas CIAIQ2014
>>Investigação Qualitativa em Ciências Sociais//Investigación Cualitativa en Ciencias Sociales//Volume 3
Doing a literature review using content analysis Research Networks Review Isabel Pinho
Denise Leite
Universidade de Aveiro (UA) Aveiro, Portugal
[email protected]
Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul (UFRGS) Porto Alegre, Brasil
[email protected]
Abstract —Research networks (RN) are social spaces in academia where knowledge processes happens, driven by collaboration and competition forces. Since RN is a complex phenomenon, new research is emerging in all fields of knowledge, its understanding needs a broad approach. This paper aims to examine pertinent and accessible literature to give a state of art of the so called research networks science. There is novelty in reviewing referential databases in which are included not only English written papers but also Portuguese and Spanish articles. Seven multidisciplinary databases were used for identifying relevant papers: Web of Knowledge; Scopus; Academic Search Complete; Proquest; Eric; Scielo; Redalyc and after a triage process of 1093 articles, 125 journals examined, 148 articles were selected for full analysis in three levels of aggregation, individual, institutional and system research. A framework was organized including the literature analysis, on micro (individual), meso (institutional) and macro (system) levels. From content analysis of selected articles some relevant themes emerge linked with topic. Integration of this information helps to build a conceptual model on Research Networks.
I.
INTRODUCTION
Networks are a theoretical and empirical convergence area in science; some authors even consider that it has become a “new science of networks” [1-3]. This exponentially growing convergence appeals to the contribution of various disciplines and to the need for an integration of all this knowledge. The diversity of contexts in which networks are called upon is actually so great that different disciplines are taking various approaches. New trends, new collaboration patterns, new regional RN are designing a new map of the global science where changes must be taken into account. This paper aims to give a state of art on RN domain through a literature review. Maximizing the strengths of both types, seminal and systematic review, we look for an integration of results, the synthesis of research to promote evidence. As RN plays a crucial role in the production of knowledge in spite of different knowledge fields and disciplines; as some evidence correlates networking to changing research outputs and impacts it is justifiable to conduct a systematic review on this phenomenon. However, what deserve to be investigated and attracted our interest was the interactive process of collaboration that occurs within the research networks.
Keywords - content analysis; literature review; networks; research networks. Resumo — As redes de investigação (RN) são espaços sociais, na academia, onde acontecem os processos de conhecimento impulsionados pelas forças da colaboração e da competição. Como a rede de investigação é um fenômeno complexo, o seu estudo forma um novo campo de pesquisa que apela a várias áreas do conhecimento, ou seja, para a sua compreensão é necessário ter uma ampla abordagem. Este artigo pretende, através da análise da literatura relevante, apresentar o estado de arte da denominada ciência das redes de pesquisa. Foram utilizadas sete bases de dados multidisciplinares para identificar documentos relevantes: Web of Knowledge; Scopus; Academic Search Complete; Proquest; Eric; Scielo; Redalyc. Depois de um processo de triagem de 1.093 artigos, publicados em 125 periódicos, foram selecionados 148 artigos, os quais foram submetidos a uma análise completa em três níveis de agregação, de pesquisa individual, institucional e sistema. Assim, foi organizada uma ferramenta de análise da literatura, em três níveis: micro (individual), meso (institucional) e macro (sistema). A partir da análise de conteúdo, dos artigos selecionados, emergem alguns temas relevantes ligados ao tópico de redes de investigação. A integração destas informações ajuda a construir um modelo conceptual sobre redes de pesquisa.
In this paper we intend to contribute to fix the main and currently relevant concepts that can bring lights to people who need to understand or to manage or to evaluate Research Networks. To achieve this goal it is necessary previously to have answers to some of the following questions: what is a research network? What are its elements and main themes? How are they born? How do they evolve? What are their ‘behaviors’? What are the mechanisms that are behind the interactive process? How can we leverage those mechanisms to increase the production and use of knowledge? What are the changes? The article is organized as follows. The next session is related to methodology, where it is described our planning, searching, screening extraction and synthesis processes. From integrative review emerge relevant themes. Article ends with some reflections about future work. II.
METHODOLOGY
The literature review has been carried out following three main stages: seminal review, systematic review and integration review.
Palavras Chave – análise de conteúdo; redes; revisão da literatura; redes pesquisa; redes de investigação.
The quality of literature review depends on prior knowledge and experience. In the present case, this study is part of a project developed by a research group where
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>>Atas CIAIQ2014
>>Investigação Qualitativa em Ciências Sociais//Investigación Cualitativa en Ciencias Sociales//Volume 3
information sharing is a usual practice. The contribution of all interactions related to events and disciplines during study period allowed a reach expert insight on topic and also on planning systematic literature review.
on main topic (RN) and always remembering that we want insights to provide answers to many questions, particularly about what are RN, its elements, how are they born and the way they can evolve, what are the behaviors and interaction mechanisms that are behind people in a network. This thematic content analysis was a rich interaction process and based on authors debate and consensus to refine the themes, in order to get a clear map of the field. For finding themes, the constant comparison method was used. From this integrative review stage some relevant themes emerge, related to our research questions: 1) Research Networks elements; 2) Research Networks Life Cycle and 3) Research Collaboration and 4) Research Networks outputs.
On seminal review, we approach the concept based on seminal works about Research Networks. Some books and articles were selected and analyzed with support of experts, following with a debate between researchers to obtain a solid work background. Two main types of outputs of this stage can be considered: 1) background concepts and 2) the chosen string search. Four backgrounds concepts were selected: Collaboration; Research Collaboration, Social networks and Research Networks. The approach called systematic review was first conceived in the field of medicine and later been adapted to serve a broad range of disciplines. From results of first stage we design our review protocol to structure the systematic literature review. For identifying relevant papers we choose to use seven multidisciplinary databases with a worldwide peer-reviewed articles, not only English but also in Portuguese and Spanish : Web of Knowledge; Scopus; Academic Search Complete; Proquest; Eric; Scielo; Redalyc. Some information about triage process is display in Fig. 1, that explains how we select our corpus of analysis (128 articles) from initial data collection (1093). After checking duplicate papers we read all title and abstracts of 874 remain papers. Next we select 322 references were selected on the basis of title, keywords and abstract using exclusion/inclusion criteria. Next, took place a new accurate selection, with the main criteria to have access to the full text files and focused selection aligned with the objectives of this literature review. Our working sample was reduced to 148 relevant articles.
III.
RESULTS AND FUTURE WORK
All those insights contribute on building research networks evaluation conceptual model. This process, of model construction, has a starting point: our research questions. Then we decided to do a literature review in order to identify key areas. By combining seminal review, systematic review and integration review we enrich the process of making a literature review. Defining the topic, planning the search and selecting relevant articles was the way to have a quality corpus, from diverse disciplines and fields. We perform a content analysis in a grounded-theory approach. The main result is a literature map, whose coordinates are the relevant themes and three levels of analysis which provides the structure of our research networks conceptual framework (Fig. 3).
Figure 2. Research Networks Framework
This framework is multi-dimensional due to multiple dimensions and relationships within each component. REFERENCES [1] [2] Figure 1. Corpus triage process [3]
After selected the body of literature to be considered, we analyzed them using qualitative content analysis, based on prior knowledge about the concept and structured on a set of categories in a grounded-theory approach [4, 5]. Content analysis can be defined as a research technique for the objective, systematic, and quantitative description of manifest content. We use content analysis as a strategy to deal with a big volume of information (relevant sample of scientific papers). Next we extracted main themes, from overall corpus, focused
[4] [5]
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