The structure of collaboration in the Journal of Finance

This paper studies the structure of collaboration in the Journal of Finance for the period 1980–2009 using publication data from the Social Sciences Citation Index (SSCI). There are 3,840 publications within this period, out of which 58% are collaborations. These collaborations form 405 components, with the giant component capturing approximately 54% of total coauthors (it is estimated that the upper limit of distinct JF coauthors is 2,536, obtained from the total number of distinct author keywords found within the study period). In comparison, the second largest component has only 13 members. The giant component has mean degree 3 and average distance 8.2. It exhibits power-law scaling with exponent α = 3.5 for vertices with degree ≥5. Based on the giant component, the degree, closeness and betweenness centralization score, as well as the hubs/authorities score is determined. The findings indicate that the most important vertex on the giant component coincides with Sheridan Titman based on his top ten ranking on all four scores.