A social network analysis of ICTD conferences (2006-2017)

Information and Communication Technologies for Development is an interdisciplinary area of research associated with engineering, application, and adoption of ICTs in developing regions and/or for development. The International Conference on Information and Communication Technologies and Development (ICTD) was started in 2006 with the objective to build a community of scholars and practitioners from diverse disciplinary backgrounds. In this paper, we examine the social dimension of ICTD as manifest in co-authorship ties in the papers published in conference proceedings. This research community has 1053 unique authors from 302 institutions in 55 countries. Almost 85% of 456 papers are co-authored by two or more people. Initially, the research community displayed small-world characteristics but the social network subsequently displays a distinct core-periphery structure. Further, collaborative ties among academic institutions in developing countries are comparatively less. A key implication is that institutional support is imperative to initiate and maintain collaborative research ties.