What factors are associated with increasing co-authorship in the social sciences? A case study of Danish Economics and Political Science

Abstract

The number of co-authors has in the social sciences has been rising over the last decades, but a deeper understanding of why this rise is occurring is lacking. Previous studies of co-authorship in the social sciences often refer to the physical or life sciences or anecdotal evidence to explain these changes. This article examines the relationship between changes in co-authorship and research in Danish economics and political science to gain greater insights into whether there are changes in the research or in researchers' behavior. The analysis shows that articles with empirical research, quantitative research and/or survey are more likely to have a higher number of co-authors than articles based on theoretical, interview, and qualitative research. Furthermore, international and interinstitutional Danish articles tend to have more co-authors than interinstitutional articles. The analysis also reveals that the average number of authors increases for articles with all types of research and research approaches. This indicates that the collaboration behavior of the researchers is changing.

The World-Systemic Dynamics of Knowledge Production: The Distribution of Transnational Academic Capital in the Social Sciences

“…Thus, one of the most important phenomena in career development is the mobility of researchers (Komlosy, Boatca and Nolte 2016). Emigration positively affects academic capital accumulation since it helps scholars become socialized in academic practices and conduct (Rothenberger et al 2017) while enriching skills in scholarly collaboration (Henriksen 2018;Ronda-Pupo and Katz 2018) and networking possibilities (Bormann 2017;Coccia and Bozemann 2016). This in turn boosts publication output (Aksnes et al 2013).…”

Theorizing international inequalities in communication and media studies. A field theory approach

“…Habitus is one of the main concepts of Bourdieu's field theory, and it refers to some durable and transposable dispositions or tendencies social agents have in order to being active during social actions (Grenfell, 2008). Regarding habitus in practice, the most important empirical phenomenon in career development is the mobility of researchers, because it effects on other parts of the habitus like publication habits (Aksnes et al, 2013), proper conduct (Rothenberger et al, 2017), cooperation skills (Henriksen, 2018;Ronda-Pupo and Katz, 2018) or networking (Bormann, 2017; Coccia and Bozemann, 2016).…”

“…Amongst the most obvious examples of "entry level" (Bourdieu, 2004) academic capital like BA, MA or PhD degrees accomplished in the Global North, scientists could collect advanced types of capital in the form of Global North postdoctoral research experience, international grants, Global North affiliations (Shen et al, 2018) and, mostly, publications in leading periodicals (Cole, 1967;Hanssen et al, 2017). Networking, collaboration and coauthorship are also sources of measurable academic capital in terms of both citation and publication output (Bormann, 2017; Coccia and Bozemann, 2016;Henriksen, 2018;Katz, 1999;Ronda-Pupo and Katz, 2018).…”

“…2018). Research shows that the increase of social capital in the form of coauthored papers also effects increased citation scores (Henriksen, 2018). Again, since the field of CMS is fairly hierarchical and biased towards Euro-American institutions (publishers, journals, universities and affiliations), researchers from the Global South try to cooperate strategically with Global North authors.…”

Identification of Research Thematic Approaches Based on Keywords Network Analysis in Colombian Social Sciences

“…Research in Social Sciences has lately changed its presentation, that is, with the publication formats used or association strategies between authors and institutions. Bibliometric research has mostly focused its interest on the productions indexed in Web of Science (WoS) and Scopus [2,3], the internationalization of Social Sciences [4], the collaboration between authors and institutions [5][6][7][8][9] i.a. Bibliometric studies have made possible the characterization of the Social Sciences researchers' scientific production, nevertheless, works surrounding thematic approaches analysis in this field of knowledge are still a proposal in development that has been evolving from the perspective of analysis and textual data visualization.…”