The Wisdom of the Multitude: Diversity Versus Size

Stone, Peter; Kagotani, Koji

doi:10.1007/978-3-319-58507-9_4

Cited by 1 publication

(2 citation statements)

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“…The key question is whether size or diversity is more important in the relationship between interdisciplinary collaborative research and research performance. Collective intelligence research has focused on this relationship, with Condorcet's jury theorem predicting that heterogeneous team composition may be more important when faced with highly complex decisions which are susceptible to bias 59 . To improve the accuracy of collective decision-making, a high level of diversity needs to be maintained if team size is to be continuously increased 60 .…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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The inverted U-shaped relationship between knowledge diversity of researchers and societal impact

Wang

Gan²,

Yang³

2022

Sci Rep

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With the increasing importance of interdisciplinary research, some studies have focused on the role of reference diversity by analysing reference lists of published papers. However, the relationship between the knowledge diversity of collaborating team members and research performance has been overlooked. In this study, we measured knowledge diversity through the disciplinary attributes of collaborating authors and research performance (understood as societal impact) through altmetric data. The major findings are: (1) The relationship between interdisciplinary collaboration diversity and societal impact is not a simple linear one, showing an inverted U-shaped pattern; and (2) As the number of collaborative disciplines increases, the marginal effects diminish or even become outweighed by the costs, showing a predominance of negative influences. Hence, diversity in interdisciplinary collaboration does not always have a positive impact. Research collaborations need to take into account the cost issues associated with the diversity of member disciplines.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In any case, our conclusions need to be interpreted with caution, as the relationship between size and diversity may be reversed under other conditions. For example, in real-world social activities, the performance of collective decision-making depends on a variety of factors, such as average individual accuracy and decision bias 59,61 .…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%