This book examines the structure of university knowledge production as publications. Offering an in-depth case study on a medium-size Italian university, it explores networks of collaboration by evidencing the relationship between internal and external authors, their productivity, and the role of team size taking also a longitudinal perspective.

This book investigates also partner’s selection mechanisms in terms of institutional and disciplinary, gender, and academic role proximity. The pathologies of contemporary scientific practice, such as large team size, are discussed within a broad interdisciplinary theoretical landscape.

The book shows that knowledge is produced locally and transferred globally by constituting a multi-layer Glocal Invisible College, rooted in a model of single universities made by three subsystems loosely connected.

Researchers, university administrators, and policymakers alike will find this work invaluable. For researchers, it provides a replicable methodology that combines network and statistical analysis, while for university governance and policymakers the insights gained from this analysis can inform strategies to enhance collaborative efforts and improve research outcomes.

Lucio Biggiero is a retired professor of Organization Science at the Department of Industrial Engineering Information and Economics, University of L’Aquila (Italy). His background is in economic theory and industrial economics, inter-firm networks, organizational design and coordination, complexity science, methodological and epistemological problems. In his work, he primarily employs social network analysis and agent-based simulation modeling.