Collaboration structures between German immunology institutions, and gender visibility, as reflected in the Web

Very few studies have examined reflection of scientific collaboration networks through co-authorship on the Web. In this paper the collaboration between 80 German institutions of immunology is analyzed, including gender collaboration. Multi-authored papers from 1997 are less visible on the Web in 2004 than the data from 2002. Highly productive institutions have a higher central position in both bibliographic and web collaboration networks and consequently greater influence on the entire scientific community than the less productive institutions. The contribution of female members of the German Society of Immunology in both the networks is very low in relation to that of their male counterparts, which corresponds with general results of a large gender study conducted by the European Commission.