Collaboration networks evolution of Safety Science from 1976 to 2019

There is a recent interest to understand the nature of the safety science discipline and to obtain insights in its development patterns and research trends.This article analyzes the evolution of the prevalence and scale of collaborative publishing and the macro-level collaboration scale of the Safety Science research community.Additionally,an analysis of the evolution of influential research topics of the core researchers’collaboration networks provides insights in the domain’s high-level development trends.Both the prevalence and scale of scientific collaboration are found to have increased dramatically since the inception of Journal of Occupational Accidents,Safety Science’s predecessor.Research networks have grown significantly,and collaboration between core researchers has steadily increased.Even though this indicates that a core safety science research community has developed,it is also found that the journal continues to serve as a platform for many small and unconnected author clusters.In terms of influential research topics,there is a notable shift from technical aspects of work safety towards psychological and organizational mechanisms of safety.More recently,influential work of core research networks has additionally focused on safety and risk models and methods,the conceptual and theoretical foundations of the domain,and influential research clusters have formed around safety in specific industries.The focus topics of core researcher’s collaboration clusters furthermore highlight the variety of conceptual,theoretical,and methodological approaches co-existing within Safety Science.Various implications of the findings are discussed,where both possible benefits and drawbacks of increased collaboration are highlighted and future research avenues outlined.