Bridging centrality as an indicator to measure the ‘bridging role’ of actors in networks: An application to the European Nanotechnology co-publication network

Highlights：

• We suggest a new approach to assess the positioning of actors in R&D networks: the bridging centrality (BC).

• The core of the measure is based on bridges: i.e. agents connecting two other agents in the network.

• The measure, based on a micro-model, is defined at the organization level and boils down to a combination of simple metrics.

• BC measures are extended to account for actor heterogeneity: they address how much an actor bridges different types of actors.

• An application to the European Nanotechnology co-publication network illustrates the usefulness of the BC and its extensions.