Journals publishing social network analysis

This paper presents the analysis of journals publishing articles on social network analysis (SNA). The dataset consists of articles from the Web of Science database obtained by searching for social network*, works intensively cited, written by the most prominent authors, and published in the main SNA journals up to July 2018. There were 8943 journals in 70,792 articles with complete descriptions. Using a two-mode network linking publications with journals and a one-mode network of citations between articles, we constructed and analysed the networks of citations and bibliographic coupling among journals. Based on the analysis of these networks, we identify the most prominent journals publishing SNA and reveal their relationships to each other. Special attention is given to the position of journal Social Networks among other journals in the field. We trace the development of some relationships through time and look at their distributions for selected journals. The results show that the field is growing, which can be seen by the annual rise of the number of journals publishing papers in SNA, and the average number of papers on SNA per journal (almost 3 in recent years). The journals which are currently present in the field belong to social and natural sciences. The social sciences group is represented mainly by journals from sociology and management. Other journals mainly come from the fields of physics, computer science, or are general scientific journals. While journals from social and computer sciences are connected with journals from the same fields, physics journals Physica A and Physical Review E have developed their own niche. SNA's main outlet Social Networks takes a very coherent and important position. It had explicit primacy up to the 2000s; in recent years its relative input has declined significantly due to the large number of papers published in other journals in the field.

Automated summary

This study analyzed the publication dynamics of social network analysis (SNA) articles, identifying the most prominent SNA journals and their relationships. The field is shown to be growing, with an average of approximately 3 SNA papers published per journal annually. Journals in social and natural sciences dominate the field, with sociology and management journals representing the social sciences group, while physics and computer science journals also contribute significantly.