how to plot networks over a map with the least overlap

Question

I have some authors with their city or country of affiliation. I would like to know if it is possible to plot the coauthors\' networks (figure 1), on the map, having the coordin

Answer 1

As an effort to avoid the overlapping of the 2 networks, I came to this modification of the x and y coordenates of the ggplot, which by default does not overlap the networks, see figure 1 in the question.

# get centroid positions for countries
# add coordenates to authorcountry table

# download and unzip
# https://worldmap.harvard.edu/data/geonode:country_centroids_az8
setwd("~/country_centroids_az8")
library(rgdal)
cent <- readOGR('.', "country_centroids_az8", stringsAsFactors = F)
countrycentdf<-cent@data[,c("name","Longitude","Latitude")]
countrycentdf$name[which(countrycentdf$name=="United States")]<-"USA"
colnames(countrycentdf)[names(countrycentdf)=="name"]<-"country"

authorcountry$Longitude<-countrycentdf$Longitude[match(authorcountry$country,countrycentdf$country)]
authorcountry$Latitude <-countrycentdf$Latitude [match(authorcountry$country,countrycentdf$country)]

# original coordenates of plot and its transformation
ggnetbuild<-ggplot_build(gdata)
allcoord<-ggnetbuild$data[[3]][,c("x","y","label")]
allcoord$Latitude<-authorcountry$Latitude [match(allcoord$label,authorcountry$author)]
allcoord$Longitude<-authorcountry$Longitude [match(allcoord$label,authorcountry$author)]
allcoord$country<-authorcountry$country [match(allcoord$label,authorcountry$author)]

# increase with factor the distance among dots
factor<-7
allcoord$coord_lat<-allcoord$y*factor+allcoord$Latitude
allcoord$coord_lon<-allcoord$x*factor+allcoord$Longitude
allcoord$author<-allcoord$label

# plot as in answer of JanLauGe, without jitter
library(tidyverse)
library(ggrepel)
  authors <- 
    # Get author numbers
    data_frame(
      id = seq(1, nrow(coauthors)),
      author = sapply(bip$val, function(x) x$vertex.names)) %>%
    left_join(
      allcoord,
      by = 'author') 

  # Continue as in answer of JanLauGe
  networkdata <- ## 
  dt <- ## 
  world_map <- map_data('world') 
  myMap <- ## 
  myMap