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A large variety of online communities have emerged during the last years as a result of the challenges faced by both the business and scientific worlds. This trend has also been promoted by the development of internet and new Web 2.0 technologies. In this context, this paper is focused on the determinants of success of online communities. But, as a difference from other studies, these determinants are analyzed from the social network analysis perspective. Several constructs related to the community organization as a social network are proposed and their interrelations are hypothesized in a general research framework. The obtained results test the proposed model providing the most relevant antecedents of the project success.

A case study based on Linux ports to non‐conventional processor and environments is used to test the proposed model. Structural equation modeling analysis is used to validate the structural proposed model.

The main antecedents of online communities' success, quantifying the strength of the relation through the standardized path coefficients.

The research is limited to a particular set of online communities engaged with the development of the non‐conventional Linux ports. However, they constitute a representative set of communities in the field of the open source projects (OSS) development, which are typically developed using a community of support.

This paper fulfils the main antecedents causing the successful development of Internet virtual communities. Instead of using sources of data coming from users' surveys, this study employs community interactions as a source of data. Results have important implications over the development of online communities, like software business models based on virtual communities and open source software.

This paper aims to explore the image of travel destinations after the visit by analysing sentiment orientation of the online reviews, and how this orientation, as well as other electronic word of mouth (eWOM)’s credibility sources, can affect the perceived helpfulness of shared opinions measured through the helpfulness score.

Tourist destinations are increasingly affected by travel-related information shared through the Web. More and more people first check the previous travel experiences of other people to build their own destination image and to help them in their choice of destination. This paper analyses the shared opinions related to the city of Barcelona in a well-known eWOM website. The reviewers’ opinion and the credibility sources of eWOM are extracted from the web using a webscraper, while the sentiment score to analyse the discourse orientation (positive vs negative) is calculated using computer-based sentiment analysis techniques.

Online reviews’ users are reluctant to provide extreme polar opinions (very negative, very positive) to any travel subcategory (hotel, restaurant, attractions and night-life) of a tourist destination. The results obtained also reveal that eWOM’s perceived helpfulness grows with the expertise of the reviewer. However, the helpfulness score given to the reviews posted is not influenced by the sentiment orientation of the author’s opinion.

This research is limited to the case study of Ciao, which is a well-known consumer platform, and the city of Barcelona, which is a top touristic destination. However, the approach proposed can be easily extended to other similar consumer platforms and cities using the same methodology.

Understanding the information posted in the media environment is a major concern in the field of marketing destination planning. Positive and negative eWOM offers potential consumers a clear picture on the tourist destination, and this information can be used by Destination Marketing Organisations to meet customers’ needs and expectations. The perceived helpfulness of reviews analysed in this paper can also help practitioners and scholars to understand those factors that make reviews more trustable.

From a methodological point of view, the main contribution of this research is the utilisation of an unstructured approach to the measurement of the destination image based on the sentiment analysis of shared opinions. From a theoretical point of view, the study relates the post-visit destination image with the pre-visit image formation process, using the sentiment orientation of the former and the perceived helpfulness of the latter.

During recent decades, research institutions have increased collaboration with other institutions since it is recognized as a good practice that improves their performance. However, they do not usually consider external collaborations as a strategic issue despite their benefits. The purpose of this paper consists of identifying different patterns of collaboration and internationalization of universities, with the aim of helping managers and policy makers to take decisions related to their national research policies.

Co‐authorship analysis has been used in conjunction with social network analysis to model inter‐institutional collaborations as networks, extracting these collaborations from the Web of Science database. Using several structural properties of the extracted networks and applying a statistical treatment, the main profiles of collaborations and internationalization have been obtained.

Obtained results distinguish three patterns of collaborations according to the intensity and scope of collaborations. The statistical treatment also provides a segmentation of universities according to their collaboration profiles. Finally, universities are represented in bi‐dimensional maps using external collaborations as a measure of similarity.

Although this study is restricted to English universities, it could probably be extended at least to other countries in the European Union or even other developed countries.

Research and institutions productivity are usually linked to the amount of received funding. The use of indicators related to internationalization of institutions can help to avoid a bias in favour of research quantity rather than quality, and towards a short‐term performance rather than a long‐term research capacity.

As a difference to previous works, this paper analyses networks of collaboration from the viewpoint of institutions. More specifically, the combination of social network analysis and factor analysis is used to identify patterns of collaboration among institutions. A longitudinal study is also included to demonstrate that the obtained categorization of universities is maintained over time.

With the rapidly improving communication technologies, a growing number of people communicate with each other in online environments. In particular, social networking services (SNSs) are one of the widely used and common places that enable active communication among users. To understand what drives successful online conversations in SNSs, this study aims to explore the roles of posts and first comments in successful online conversations.

To address the purpose, the data of news-related channels in Reddit were collected and analyzed.

The study found that successful conversations tend to have the post and first comment with high scores. Also, the first comments in successful online conversations tend to be easier than those in other conversations.

The results reveal that successful online conversations can be generated not only with empathic posts but also with touching or attractive first comments. In other words, users are likely to participate in an online conversation that starts with an empathic post and first comment. Moreover, both practical and theoretical implications are presented.

The present study aimed to examine the value creation process in an online forum community of a crowdsourcing company by analyzing members' interactions and network structures.

A mixed-method approach was adopted. First, a participation-observation netnographic approach was employed to identify the interactions that lead to the collective creation of three types of value: social, intellectual, and cultural. Second, using social network analysis, the collective value creation process was examined through the network structures, and the key actors and their roles in value creation were identified.

findings presented that members collectively create value in a unique manner for enhancing product designs in a crowdsourcing community. Three types of value coexisted and were often created inter-dependently. The interactions among the members were not dense yet were fairly knitted without any significant core-periphery structures, indicating a less restrained flow of value. The findings of the study identified that most of the bridging members in the network were likely to have diverse social and intellectual resources.

The present study was one of the first to examine the collective value creation process through a network perspective. In particular, this study offered a richer understanding of the unique collective value creation process in a crowdsourcing community and the role of bridging actors in the network. Implications for crowdsourcing companies are provided to sustain a continuous flow of quality contributions from the forum community members.