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Article History

Received: 10 May 2026

Accepted: 2 September 2026

First Online: 7 September 2026

Declarations

Ethics approval and consent to participate: The research protocol underlying the original institutional data used for training the synthetic data generation models was reviewed and approved by the Parul University Institutional Ethics Committee (IEC) under reference number PIET/2025-008/a (dated 11 September 2025), chaired by Dr. Vipul Vekariya. All procedures were conducted in accordance with applicable ethical guidelines and data protection regulations, including the principles outlined in the Declaration of Helsinki (1964) and its subsequent amendments. The primary analyses reported in this study were conducted on fully anonymised and aggregated institutional interaction data. Publicly released synthetic datasets were generated to replicate the statistical characteristics of the original confidential educational collaboration network and are provided solely for reproducibility and validation purposes. Informed consent for the use of institutional educational interaction data for research purposes was obtained through institutional consent mechanisms, including transparency notices and opt-out provisions for students and participants. No personally identifiable information was included in the published dataset or analytical outputs.

Competing interests: The authors declare no competing interests.