collaboratesWith

collaboratesWith is a binary relation used in data models and knowledge representations to indicate that two entities have engaged in a collaborative activity. It is commonly applied to people, organizations, teams, or projects, and is typically expressed as collaboratesWith(A, B). In many datasets the relation is modeled as symmetric, meaning that if A collaboratesWith B, B collaboratesWith A. Some schemas treat it as directional to reflect the initiator, lead, or perspective of the collaboration.

The term by itself does not specify the nature, duration, or outcomes of the cooperation. Additional qualifiers are often attached to provide context, such as sinceDate, project or projectRole, contributionPercent, venue, or roleInCollaboration. In RDF/OWL, the property can be declared as symmetric or as a general object property; in property graphs it may appear as an edge with attributes.

Common uses include mapping collaboration networks in academia, industry, and non-profit sectors, enabling network analysis, centrality measures, community detection, and visualization. It also supports search and discovery in knowledge bases, for example identifying researchers who have collaboratedWith a given author on multiple papers, or exposing cross-organizational collaboration for program evaluation.

Limitations include ambiguity about the depth or significance of the collaboration; the relation does not convey exact contributions, order of authorship, or equal involvement; data quality and definitional variance across sources can affect interpretation.