Discovering Patterns of Collaboration for Recommendation

Collaboration between research scientists, particularly those with diverse backgrounds, is a driver of scientific innovation. However, finding the right collaborator is often an unscientific process that is subject to chance. This paper explores recommending collaborators based on repeating patterns of previous successful collaboration experiences, what we term prototypical collaborations. We investigate a method for discovering such prototypes to use them as a basis to guide the recommendation of new collaborations. To this end, we also examine two methods for matching collaboration seekers to these prototypical collaborations. Our initial studies reveal that though promising, improving collaborations through recommendation is a complex goal.