A game-theory modeling approach to utility and strength of interactions dynamics in biomedical research social networks

Abstract

Collaboration has become a cornerstone in biomedical research today. In contrast to physics which has a long history and experience in collaborative projects, biology is only recently becoming an evermore collaborative discipline. In this article we explore the effect of a collaboration network on the distribution of players having access to certain amount of resources from other players in the network and the distribution of the strength of interactions among them. We are interested in how they affect each other in the context of a network of scientific collaboration under the idea that while researchers are interested in maximizing their utilities, they also know that it is important to invest in building collaborative relationships.