Purpose: It is widely accepted that coauthorship and collaboration promotes intellectual partnerships and improves the quality of publications. This paper examines the relationship between collaboration, productivity and publications in the field of family business. Design/methodology/approach: The authors identify the most prolific authors, affiliations and countries and focus on the evolution of research in the field of family business. In doing so, the authors employ social network analysis to discover the structure of the networks and the ways in which authors, institutions and countries interact. Findings: The empirical results show that collaboration is positively related to productivity, and there is significant evidence that the shaped networks exhibit small-world characteristics, a condition in which collaboration within authors becomes integrated in conjunction with time. Practical implications: The findings highlight the mechanics of collaborative research production and can be useful to understand the importance of collaboration patterns to be followed in the field of family business. Originality/value: The contributions are as follows: (a) application of social network analysis to model the coauthorship patterns among individuals, institutions and countries in family business; (b) distinguishing the most degree-central authors in the social network of collaborating academics; (c) investigation of the academic collaborations in family business that have the characteristics of a small-world social network and (d) suggesting a unique connection, through published keywords, between the research priorities of the most central or prolific authors with the research trends in the family business literature. The authors demonstrate that authors' collaboration becomes integrated in conjunction with time.