Cooperation and networking are important instruments and suggestions of an innovation oriented regional policy. They bring together similar, but not identical ideas, practices and problems and can therefore stimulate the creation of new ideas and consequently innovations. In this paper, we intend to look at ERSA and try to identify to what extent the European regional science community implements its own suggestions. Based on the information that is contained in the CD-ROMS from earlier congresses we want to identify the amount of coauthorship in ERSA, the type and spatial reach of this collaboration, and its development over time. We hope to be able to identify key nodes of a co-publication network and its basic structure. This information would be valuable not only from an academic point of view, but also for advancing European regional science toward the intended European research area.
