The scientific community organises its relationships into network patterns, where the nodes are
individuals (scientists) and the links are acquaintance and common work, usually presented at
workshops and conferences and/or published in books and scientific journals. A references review
on Population Studies by Italian scientists is delivered every two years by the Demography Section
of the Italian Statistical Society; the review is exhaustive for academic demographers.
In this paper, the properties of the demographers’ network in 1998–1999 are evaluated, with
the aim of identifying factors which may influence collaborative relations among actors. The
probability of cooperation between couples (dyads) of demographers is modelled, conditionally on
observed characteristics of the dyad (sex, academic position, university affiliation). Main results
suggest that “closeness”, defined in a wider sense and not simply as geographical proximity, plays
a major role in determining actors’ relationships.
