About COLLNET

COLLNET is representing a global interdisciplinary research network on the topic "Collaboration in Science and in Technology" based on webometrics, informetrics and scientometrics as well as on qualitative aspects of science of science.
The development of information and library sciences together with science studies will, among other things, be fashioned by the development of the traditional quantitative studies conducted in this field called scientometrics or informetrics and nowadays additionally webometrics. Quantitative and qualitative aspects of science of science are studied as well as collaboration and communication in science and in technology.
The outstanding works by the well-known American scientists Derek John de Solla Price, Donald deB.Beaver, and others on the topic of collaboration in science have, over a number of years, encouraged a number of scientists working in the field of quantitative as well as qualitative scientific research to concentrate their research in this field. This has led both to an increase in the number of relevant publications concerning this topic in international magazines, and to an increase in the number of lectures in international conferences.
Moreover, the rise in collaboration in science and technology experienced world-wide at national and international level, has assumed such an overriding importance that there is now an urgent need perceptible to study such processes with a view to acquiring fundamental knowledge for organizing future research and its application to science and technology policies. Therefore in the year 2000 the time had come to create a global interdisciplinary research network COLLNET on the topic "Collaboration in Science and in Technology" (Website: www.collnet.de) The COLLNET members from more than 25 countries from all over the world intended to work on both theoretical and applied aspects. The focus of this research network is to examine the phenomena of collaboration in science, its effect on productivity, innovation and quality, and the benefits and outcomes accruing to individuals, institutions and nations of collaborative work and co-authorship in science.
On account of the diversity of these issues it is possible to obtain promising results only against the backdrop of an interdisciplinary approach and from an intercultural viewpoint including both developing and developed countries.
COLLNET was founded in 2000 in Berlin with its virtual center by three scientists from China, India and Germany under the authorship of Hildrun Kretschmer in her capacity as co-ordinator. The establishment of COLLNET has been reported in a special issue of the international journal Scientometrics(Kretschmer, H., L. Liang, R. Kundra: Foundation of a global interdisciplinary research network (COLLNET) with Berlin as the virtual centre. Scientometrics.Vol. 52. No.3 (2001)531-537).

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