Does Collocation Inform the Impact of Collaboration?

Abstract

BackgroundIt has been shown that large interdisciplinary teams working across geography are more likely to be impactful. We asked whether the physical proximity of collaborators remained a strong predictor of the scientific impact of their research as measured by citations of the resulting publications.Methodology/Principal FindingsArticles published by Harvard investigators from 1993 to 2003 with at least two authors were identified in the domain of biomedical science. Each collaboration was geocoded to the precise three-dimensional location of its authors. Physical distances between any two coauthors were calculated and associated with corresponding citations. Relationship between distance of coauthors and citations for four author relationships (first-last, first-middle, last-middle, and middle-middle) were investigated at different spatial scales. At all sizes of collaborations (from two authors to dozens of authors), geographical proximity between first and last author is highly informative of impact at the microscale (i.e. within building) and beyond. The mean citation for first-last author relationship decreased as the distance between them increased in less than one km range as well as in the three categorized ranges (in the same building, same city, or different city). Such a trend was not seen in other three author relationships.Conclusions/SignificanceDespite the positive impact of emerging communication technologies on scientific research, our results provide striking evidence for the role of physical proximity as a predictor of the impact of collaborations.

The Structure of Distributed Scientific Research Teams Affects Collaboration and Research Output

“…Both crossdiscipline and cross-site collaborations contributed to this growth. Importantly, the analysis here suggests that multi-site team science initiatives are more likely to foster greater collaboration and cooperation when they are designed to be transdisciplinary from the start, whereas one previous study [24] found that across all types of biomedical studies increasing physical distance between investigators is a major deterrent to scientific impact. In the current environment of shrinking grant support, funding agencies may want to consider focusing on transdisciplinary team science as a way to increase research success for a given level of funding.…”

“…Although others have measured impact of publications using citation counts [24], we did not consider the four years of our study sufficient time for citations to accrue in a way that would reflect impact. We thus considered citation data to be a less reliable measure of research output.…”

Long term productivity and collaboration in information science

“…Positive associations between international collaboration and citation rates have also been found for Scandinavian science (Glänzel, 2000), Brazilian science (Leta & Chaimovich, 2002), New Zealand science (Goldfinch, Dale, & DeRouen, 2003), and Danish industry (Frederiksen, 2004). In contrast, papers with at least one Harvard University co-author attract less citations the greater the physical distance between the affiliations (Lee, Brownstein, Mills, & Kohane, 2010), suggesting that international collaboration is ineffective for Harvard authors. This is probably a special case for one elite university and hence does not negate the other findings.…”

Do Not Brainstorm!

“…Authors who work physically close together also produce higher quality science. 13 In a study, authors separated by more than 1 km had the lowest number of citations. Groupthink is common in science, so common that author bylines keep getting longer.…”