How Connected are the ACM SIG Communities?

Abstract

Currently, computer scientists publish more in conferences than journals and several conferences are the main venue in many computer science subareas. There has been considerable debate about the role of conferences for computer science research and one of the main arguments in favor of them is that conferences bring researchers together, allowing them to enhance collaborations and establish research communities in a young and fast-evolving discipline. In this work, we investigate if computer science conferences are really able to create collaborative research communities by analyzing the structure of the communities formed by the flagship conferences of several ACM SIGs. Our findings show that most of these flagship conferences are able to connect their main authors in large and well-structured communities. However, we have noted that in a few ACM SIG flagship conferences authors do not collaborate over the years, creating a structure with several small disconnected components.