How to improve research quality? Examining the impacts of collaboration intensity and member diversity in collaboration networks

Abstract

Better research quality not only inspires scholars to continue their research, but also increases the possibility of higher research budgets from sponsors. Given the importance of research quality, this study proposes that utilizing social capital (i.e., research collaboration) might be a promising avenue to achieve better research quality. In addition, as every scholar has his or her own expertise and knowledge, the diversity of collaborating members might be an extra resource for reinforcing research quality. The purpose of this study is to investigate the impact of research collaboration and member diversity on research quality, including the number of citations, the impact factor, and the size of the research award. To explore unknown associations, the author adopts two data sources, that is, the Social Science Citation Index database and academic database of a university, to verify the hypotheses. The results show that a higher intensity at which scholars are embedded in a collaboration network, results in higher research quality. However, member diversity does not seem to be a major concern during the organization of a research group. Research quality is not affected, regardless of whether a scholar collaborates with different or the same co-authors.

Relationship among research collaboration, number of documents and number of citations: a case study in Spanish computer science production in 2000–2009

“…They are motivated by the assumption that synergy leads to more and better results. A recent study explains this point by arguing that each researcher has his own knowledge and the diversity of collaborating members could be an extra resource for reinforcing research quality (Liao 2011).…”

Global Ranking of Management- and Clinical-Centered eHealth Journals

“…Empirical evidence reveals that strong and healthy collaborative networks are necessary to ensure a continuous improvement of the quality, quantity, and impact of scientific research output (Chung, Cox, & Kim, 2009;Liao, 2011). The e-health discipline's perceived duality may divide researchers into two camps, which does not bode well with the spirit of cooperation and collaboration.…”

Difusión científica 2.0. Adopción y uso de herramientas digitales por revistas académicas de comunicación en Iberoamérica

“…Estudios precedentes afirman que la adopción de las TIC al trabajo de investigación y difusión científica, así como la intensificación de la colaboración académica, gracias a estas tecnologías tiene serias implicaciones sobre la calidad de la investigación (Borgman, 2007;Liao, 2010).…”

“…Estas diferencias en el grado de adopción de la innovación (Rogers, 2003) pueden estar relacionadas con en el grado de colaboración científica (Cummings & Kiesler, 2005;Hara et al, 2003;Rigby & Edler, 2005) y con el factor de impacto de las publicaciones académicas (Liao, 2010). El objetivo de esta investigación es conocer y entender conocer cómo se da el proceso de adopción de herramientas digitales por parte de publicaciones académicas iberoamericanas en comunicación.…”