document: A pretopological approach for structural analysis The aim of this paper is to present a methodological approach for problems encountered in structural analysis . This approach is based upon the pretopological concepts of pseudoclosure and minimal closed subsets . The advantage of this approach is that it provides a framework which is general enough to model and formulate different types of connections that exist between the elements of a population . In addition , it has enabled us to develop a new structural analysis algorithm . An explanation of the definitions and properties of the pretopological concepts applied in this work is first shown and illustrated in sample settings . The structural analysis algorithm is then described and the results obtained in an economic study of the impact of geographic proximity on scientific collaborations are presented
doc_bio_tags: O B I O B I O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O B I O O O O O O O O O O B O B I I O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O B O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O B I O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O B I O O O O O O O O O O B I O O O O B I O B I O O