Tracing collaboration beyond the confines of academia through co-authorship of publications in the humanities

In this study, we use affiliation information for co-authored publications in the Flemish humanities to trace collaborations between people affiliated with universities and people affiliated with organizations outside of the higher education sector (non-academics). The data was collected from the Flemish regional research database VABB-SHW. We show how collaboration patterns with non-academic organizations differ between different humanities disciplines. We also consider the difference between people with dual appointments (both academic and non-academic) and “true non-academics” (non-academic affiliation only). Our preliminary results show that academics from the humanities do collaborate with non-academic organizations and that the collaboration patterns differ between the various disciplines. As the current paper presents a research-in-progress, we also discuss the directions the research will follow.