Mapping and analyzing the co-authorship network of articles in the Family Studies Quarterly Journal

This study aims to provide a comprehensive overview of researchers' performance over the past twenty years of publishing the Family Studies Quarterly, utilizing a scientometrics approach. The Family Studies Quarterly is published regularly in collaboration with the Family Science Centre and the Scientific Association of Child and Adolescent Clinical Psychology. This interdisciplinary quarterly journal, published in Persian, has been in circulation since May 2005. Family Studies serves as a platform for presenting and analyzing studies, research, and theoretical contributions from researchers and specialists across various fields of knowledge who focus on family-related topics. The present study employed a descriptive and applied scientometrics approach. It involved the collection of all articles published in the Family Studies Quarterly over a twenty-year period. The analysis focused on the distribution of authorship frequency in each article, the organizational affiliations of the authors, and the coefficient of collaboration among them. The primary data consisted of articles published in the Family Studies Quarterly since its inception. This data was obtained from the journal's website and its published articles. To prepare the symmetric matrix (adjacency matrix) of co-authorship, Excel spreadsheet software was utilized. Each author's name and the number of collaborations with other authors throughout the publication history of the Family Studies Quarterly were manually recorded at their intersections in the symmetric matrix. Subsequently, to visualize and analyses the co-authorship network, the adjacency matrix was imported into UCI Net software, and NetDraw, its complementary package, was employed. Reason: Improved clarity, readability, and technical accuracy while maintaining the original meaning. The present study demonstrated that groups consisting of four or more individuals exhibit the highest levels of co-authorship patterns. The results of the study showed that the trend of publishing articles in this quarterly has been characterized by group collaboration, highlighting researchers' preference for teamwork. This finding aligns with Hart's (2000) research, which indicates that collaborative efforts are more effective than individual endeavors. Scientific cooperation can be defined as a process in which individuals and groups coordinate their efforts and mutually benefit from one another to conduct research and engage in scientific activities. In today's era, marked by the convergence of various scientific disciplines, collaborative efforts in producing scholarly works have become increasingly significant. Over the past few decades, scientific cooperation and participation among experts from diverse fields have gained considerable momentum. It is essential to focus on acquiring high-quality articles through an extensive collaboration network for publication in the journal. Researchers in a scientific field typically review the works of their predecessors to understand the boundaries of knowledge within their area of expertise. To identify the most pertinent scientific works, researchers employ various methods to evaluate and measure scientific activities within their fields.