Social network analysis of the CaRE² health equity center: Team science in full display

Cancer health disparities that exist in the Black or African American and Hispanic or Latino/x communities are scientific challenges, yet there are limited team science approaches to mitigate these challenges. This article's purpose is to evaluate the team science collaborations of the National Institutes of Health-funded Florida-California Cancer Research, Education & Engagement (CaRE² ) Center partnership underscoring the inclusion of multidisciplinary team members and future under-represented minority (URM) cancer researchers. To understand our collaborative efforts, we conducted a social network analysis (SNA) of the CaRE² Center partnership among University of Florida, Florida A&M University, and University of Southern California with data collected via the dimensions.ai application programming interface. We downloaded metadata for all publications associated with dimensions.ai IDs. The CaRE² collaboration network increased over time as evidenced by accruing more external collaborators and more publishing of collaborative works. Degree centrality of key personnel was stable in each wave of the networks. CaRE² key personnel averaged a total of 60.8 collaborators in 2018-2019 (SD = 57.4, minimum = 3, maximum = 221), and 65.8 collaborators in 2020-2021 (SD = 56.06, minimum = 4, maximum = 222). Betweenness was largely stable across all groups and waves. We observed a steady decline in transitivity, the probability that a pair of CaRE² co-authors shared a third co-author, from 0.74 in 2018 to 0.47 in 2022. The SNA findings suggest that the CaRE² Center partnership's publications show growth in team science collaborations with the inclusion of multidisciplinary team members from the three partner institutions and future URM cancer researchers who were mentored as trainees and early-stage investigators.