The book addresses the issue of interdisciplinary understanding of collaboration on the topic of social network studies. Researchers and practitioners from various disciplines including sociology, computer science, socio-psychology, public health, complex systems, and management science have worked largely independently, each with quite different principles, terminologies, theories. and methodologies. The book aims to fill the gap among these disciplines with a number of the latest interdisciplinary collaboration studies.

Xiaoming Fu obtained his Ph.D. degree in Computer Science from Tsinghua University, China in 2000. He worked as a research staff at Technical University Berlin before joining the University of Göttingen, Germany in 2002, where he has been a Professor and heading the Computer Networks Group since 2007. His research areas include architecture, protocols and applications of Internet-based communication systems, including information dissemination, cloud computing, and social networks/social computing. He is an IEEE Senior Member and an IEEE Communications Society Distinguished Lecturer. He served as Secretary (2008-2010) and Vice Chair (2010-2012) of IEEE Communications Society Technical Committee on Computer Communications (TCCC), then Chair (2011-2013) of the Internet Technical Committee of the IEEE Communications Society and the Internet Society. Currently he serves on the editorial boards of IEEE Communications Magazine, IEEE Transactions on Service and Network Management, Elsevier Computer Networks and Computer Communications journals.

Professor Jar-der Luo is a professor of sociology and director of Center for Social Network Research, Tsinghua University, Beijing, China. He is also a joint professor in the Management School of the Tsinghua University in Taiwan. He got his bachelor degree in 1982 from National Taiwan University, master and PHD from State University of New York at Stony Brook. His teaching focuses on theory of social capital, social network analysis, and organizational theory. He also teaches management courses in many other oversea and domestic business schools. Professor Luo's research endeavors to bring social network, especially Chinese Guangxi, into analysis of economic behaviors and business management. With others, he is trying to set up a research committee on social network analysis. Professor Luo has published widely in oversea and domestic academic journals. He has written The Chinese Trust Game, Textbook of Social Network Analysis and other books. Professor Luo's main research interests include organization research, social network analysis, and economic sociology.

Margarete Boos is professor and head of the Department of Social and Communication Psychology at University of Göttingen, Germany. She got her PhD on sociology from University of Bonn, Germany, in 1983. Her research interest include Social-psychological group research, Methods for the analysis of interactions and communication, Computer-based communication in groups and organizations, and Group coordination, etc.