Using Social Network Analysis to Inform Implementation Science Infrastructure Development

Implementation is an inherently collaborative and transdisciplinary activity; however, engaging key partners across research, practice, and policy sectors is challenging. Successful implementation requires supportive infrastructure for both research and practice. This paper presents practice-based reflections on the value of exploratory social network analysis during the early phases of developing implementation infrastructure in Alberta, Canada. Specifically, we argue that exploratory social network analysis, when paired with follow-up qualitative interviews, can help identify local implementation science assets, inform network-building, and promote implementation support services to target users. Exploratory social network analysis helped our team identify key implementation researchers and implementation support practitioners in Alberta's health-research ecosystem. The analysis also showed that implementation research in the province of Alberta follows a consultation model, with one-way assistance requests, while implementation practice is more collaborative in nature. The follow-up interviews provided an opportunity to engage with teams across the networks and allowed participants to contextualize the social network analysis findings. This uncovered: (1) widespread need for implementation science capacity-building, and (2) key implementation partnership considerations. These results illustrate how organizations can employ social network analysis in practical ways to inform implementation infrastructure development.

The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s43477-025-00180-8.