Heterogeneity of collaboration and its relationship with research impact in a biomedical field

Abstract

This paper analyses existing trends in the collaborative structure of the Pharmacology and Pharmacy field in Spain and explores its relationship with research impact. The evolution in terms of size of the research community, the typology of collaborative links (national, international) and the scope of the collaboration (size of links, type of partners) are studied by means of different measures based on co-authorship. Growing heterogeneity of collaboration and impact of research are observed over the years. Average journal impact (MNJS) and citation score (MNCS) normalised to world average tend to grow with the number of authors, the number of institutions and collaboration type. Both national and international collaboration show MNJS values above the country's average, but only internationally co-authored publications attain citation rates above the world's average. This holds at country and institutional sector levels, although not all institutional sectors obtain the same benefit from collaboration. Multilateral collaboration with high-level R&D countries yields the highest values of research impact, although the impact of collaboration with low-level R&D countries has been optimised over the years. Although scientific collaboration is frequently based on individual initiative, policy actions are required to promote the more heterogeneous types of collaboration.

The relationship between the research performance of scientists and their position in co-authorship networks in three fields

“…Different indicators have been introduced to quantify collaboration in research papers (see for example, Egghe, 1991;Glänzel & Schubert, 2004;Vinkler, 2010) and extensive literature has been devoted to explore collaboration patterns (Bordons & Gómez, 2000) and the influence of collaboration on the productivity of scientists and on the impact of research (Abramo, D'Angelo, & Di Costa, 2009;Bordons, Aparicio, & Costas, 2013;Glänzel, 2001;Lee & Bozeman, 2005). In most recent years, the application of social network analysis to study co-authorship relations has emerged as an interesting approach, since it allows us to visualise and investigate social structures and relations (see for example, Abbasi, Altmann, & Hossain, 2011;Abbasi, Chung, & Hossain, 2012;Jansen, von Görtz, & Heidler, 2010;Li-Chun, Kretschmer, Hanneman, & Ze-Yuan, 2006;Newman, 2001;Otte & Rousseau, 2002).…”

Multilevel Analysis of International Scientific Collaboration Network in the Influenza Virus Vaccine Field: 2006–2013

“…Meanwhile, collaboration networks are an important medium for examining scholarly communication [22]. Some scholars investigated the networks as well as core groups of international collaboration in either specific fields or selected cooperating partners at the country and institution levels [23][24][25][26][27]. Country-level collaboration studies help in the examination of the roles of every nation, while institution-level collaboration studies are useful for exploring the typology of collaborative links (national and international), the size of the research community, and the scope of the collaboration.…”

Tracking the performance of an R&D programme in the biomedical sciences

“…Although co-authorship is not the only trace collaboration leaves, studies in this regard have shown that it enhances research productivity (Lee & Bozeman, 2005) and citation impact (Glänzel, 2001). Other studies suggest further benefits when such collaboration is between authors from different institutional categories, such as more innovative and creative research (Bordons, Aparicio, & Costas, 2013). In this context, it is not surprising the introduction of research policies and strategies to promote such collaboration links in the biomedical sciences.…”