ArticleCurrent protocols2026
How to Apply Social Network Analysis to Evaluate Professional Development Programs in Biomedical Research.
Article in Current protocols, 2026. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Not yet cited in PubMed.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
0 citing papers in PubMed.
No citing paper in PubMed yet.
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
3 authors.
Funding
Abstract
Effective evaluation and assessment of research-focused programs, including centers, core facilities, and institutes, is crucial but inherently challenging. Faculty members are often departmentalized, yet their research necessitates campus-wide access to infrastructure, specialized equipment, students, and interdisciplinary collaborators, thus creating assessment and reporting challenges. Additionally, it can be challenging to demonstrate return on investment for new and emerging programs as well as those at institutions without an extensive history of research. Social network analysis (SNA) tools may be used to address these challenges. SNA provides a data-driven understanding of collaboration dynamics in programs designed to build research community and provides a method to quantify program impact and demonstrate the effectiveness of capacity-building investments in fostering collaborative research and scientific output. Additionally, SNA is useful in pinpointing influential researchers who act as central nodes or bridges, and may guide future efforts in mentorship, grant development, and recruitment, by highlighting areas of productive collaboration, or alternatively, potential fragmentation in the network. The results may be used to guide future resource allocation, inform new initiatives within the program, or alternatively, target interventions if needed to strengthen a specific research area. Initial analysis can help a program assess collaborative health of a research community by providing a baseline for tracking changes in network structure and collaboration patterns over time, setting the stage for longitudinal evaluation. This article outlines the steps required to carry out SNA of bibliometric data from a biomedical research community. The article describes the acquisition of data through PubMed, application of VOSviewer and Gephi, data visualization, statistical analysis, and generation of figures suitable for publication, including examples of results designed for specific audiences and stakeholders. The article also covers creating an author thesaurus for disambiguation of authors who publish under multiple names. © 2026 The Author(s). Current Protocols published by Wiley Periodicals LLC. Basic Protocol 1: Obtaining data Basic Protocol 2: Initial bibliometric data processing and co-authorship network construction using VOSviewer Basic Protocol 3: Interfacing VOSviewer data with Gephi Basic Protocol 4: Advanced network visualization and statistical analysis in Gephi Basic Protocol 5: Creating impactful figures Basic Protocol 6: Identifying key individuals or groups of individuals within the network Support Protocol 1: VOSviewer author thesaurus file generation Support Protocol 2: Quick-start protocol: SNA for program evaluation.
Indexed as
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What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.