  Network topology and its relationship to tie strengths may hinder or enhance
the spreading of information in social networks. We study the correlations
between tie strengths and topology in networks of scientific collaboration, and
show that these are very different from ordinary social networks. For the
latter, it has earlier been shown that strong ties are associated with dense
network neighborhoods, while weaker ties act as bridges between these. Because
of this, weak links act as bottlenecks for the diffusion of information. We
show that on the contrary, in co-authorship networks dense local neighborhoods
mainly consist of weak links, whereas strong links are more important for
overall connectivity. The important role of strong links is further highlighted
in simulations of information spreading, where their topological position is
seen to dramatically speed up spreading dynamics. Thus, in contrast to ordinary
social networks, weight-topology correlations enhance the flow of information
across scientific collaboration networks.
