Network of participants in European research: accepted versus rejected proposals

Abstract

We investigate the network formed by the collaboration of researchers seeking funding by the European Commission by submitting research proposals. Institutions are network nodes and collaborations are links between the nodes. We constructed one network for the accepted proposals and one for the rejected ones, in order to look for any structural differences between them. To this end, first, we compare the size of the largest connected components and the resulting degree distributions. The latter show notable difference only in the region of relatively small degrees. We calculate the assortative mixing by participant type, i.e. a property which indicates whether the participant is a university/research institute, a company (non-profit included), or undefined. By aggregating the data of both networks into three geographical scales (city, region, country), we compare the degree assortativity and average node weight, in all scales. With respect to these two features the networks display similar behaviour. Finally, we compare a series of centrality measures and the Minimum Spanning Trees, at the country scale, to assess the relative performance of the countries. We find that five countries, France, Germany, the United Kingdom, Spain and Italy, play a central role in both networks, however, their relative significance is not the same.