Rolf Wigand, Maulden-Entergy chair and distinguished professor of information science and management, recently co-authored an article in the International Journal of Information Technology & Decision Making.

The article, “New Directions in the Degree Centrality Measure: Towards a Time-variant Approach,” was co-authored with Shahadat Uddin and Liaquat Hossain, both of the Center for Complex Systems Research at The University of Sydney in Australia.

In the article, Wigand and his co-authors propose that prior analysis concerning the effectiveness of social network communications has focused too much on the mere number of connections established.

“Although recognizing the number of connections in a social network is, of course, of great importance, this measure in and by itself is only a partial story,” Wigand explained. “It would describe the network merely in the form of rudimentary structure.”

The authors posit that considering the duration of each link is also of substantive importance. Adding duration, they argue, gives the connection network measure an added qualitative dimension.

Wigand said that within a social network, a focal person within that network could possibly have several hundred relationships. But also knowing how long these linkages exist and what their duration per contact is are important and valuable additional measures.

“This, in turn, provides a more complete, rich and rounded picture of the connections in a social network,” he said.

Wigand and his colleagues have introduced what they refer to as the time-variant approach, which considers both the presence as well as the duration of links among social media users. Their underlying research examined  hospital lengths of stay at a macro- and a micro-level, testing within a patient-physician network evolving over time during patient hospitalization periods.

Wigand has published several books and monographs, as well as approximately 175 articles and chapters. He has presented more than 200 papers at national and international conferences.

The International Journal of Information Technology & Decision Making provides a global forum for exchanging research findings and case studies which bridge the latest information technology and various decision-making techniques.

The journal is peer-reviewed and publishes both high-quality academic (theoretical or empirical) and practical papers in the broad ranges of information technology related topics. It has an impact factor of 3.139 and the journal enjoys the following rankings:

• 7th out of 108 in COMPUTER SCIENCE, ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE
• 5th out of 126 in COMPUTER SCIENCE, INFORMATION SYSTEMS
• 7th out of 97 in COMPUTER SCIENCE, INTERDISCIPLINARY APPLICATIONS
• 3rd out of 74 in OPERATIONS RESEARCH & MANAGEMENT SCIENCE