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Understanding institutional collaboration networks: effects of collaboration on research impact and productivity

Understanding institutional collaboration networks: effects of collaboration on research impact and productivity
Understanding institutional collaboration networks: effects of collaboration on research impact and productivity
There is substantial competition among academic institutions. They compete for students, researchers, reputation, and funding. For success, they need not only to excel in teaching, but also their research profile is considered an important factor. Institutions accordingly take actions to improve their research profiles. They encourage researchers to publish frequently and regularly (publish or perish) on the assumption that this generates both more and better research. Collaboration has also been encouraged by institutions and even required by some funding calls.

This thesis examines the empirical evidence on the interrelations among institutional research productivity, impact and collaborativity. It studies article publication data across ACM and Web of Science covering five disciplines { Computer Science, Pharmacology, Materials Science, Psychology and Law. Institutions that publish less seek to publish collaboratively with other institutions. Collaboration boosts productivity for all the disciplines investigated excepted Law; however, the amount of productivity increase resulting from the institutions' attempt to collaborate more is small. The world's most productive institutions publish at least 50% of their papers on their own. Institutions doing more collaborative work are not found to correlate strongly with their impact either. The correlation between collaborativity and individual paper impact or institutional impact is small once productivity has been partialled out. In Computer Science, Pharmacology and Materials Science, no correlation is found. The decisive factor appears to be productivity. Partialling out productivity results in the largest reductions in the remaining correlations. It may be that only better equipped and well-funded institutions can publish without having to rely on external collaborators. These institutions have been publishing most of their output non-collaboratively, and are also of high quality and highly reputable, which may have equipped and funded them in the first place
.
University of Southampton
Yao, Jiadi
e07ea12e-212e-4628-92f1-169671c1707a
Yao, Jiadi
e07ea12e-212e-4628-92f1-169671c1707a
Carr, Les
0572b10e-039d-46c6-bf05-57cce71d3936

Yao, Jiadi (2014) Understanding institutional collaboration networks: effects of collaboration on research impact and productivity. University of Southampton, Physical Sciences and Engineering, Doctoral Thesis, 200pp.

Record type: Thesis (Doctoral)

Abstract

There is substantial competition among academic institutions. They compete for students, researchers, reputation, and funding. For success, they need not only to excel in teaching, but also their research profile is considered an important factor. Institutions accordingly take actions to improve their research profiles. They encourage researchers to publish frequently and regularly (publish or perish) on the assumption that this generates both more and better research. Collaboration has also been encouraged by institutions and even required by some funding calls.

This thesis examines the empirical evidence on the interrelations among institutional research productivity, impact and collaborativity. It studies article publication data across ACM and Web of Science covering five disciplines { Computer Science, Pharmacology, Materials Science, Psychology and Law. Institutions that publish less seek to publish collaboratively with other institutions. Collaboration boosts productivity for all the disciplines investigated excepted Law; however, the amount of productivity increase resulting from the institutions' attempt to collaborate more is small. The world's most productive institutions publish at least 50% of their papers on their own. Institutions doing more collaborative work are not found to correlate strongly with their impact either. The correlation between collaborativity and individual paper impact or institutional impact is small once productivity has been partialled out. In Computer Science, Pharmacology and Materials Science, no correlation is found. The decisive factor appears to be productivity. Partialling out productivity results in the largest reductions in the remaining correlations. It may be that only better equipped and well-funded institutions can publish without having to rely on external collaborators. These institutions have been publishing most of their output non-collaboratively, and are also of high quality and highly reputable, which may have equipped and funded them in the first place
.

Text
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More information

Published date: June 2014
Organisations: University of Southampton, Web & Internet Science

Identifiers

Local EPrints ID: 379925
URI: http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/id/eprint/379925
PURE UUID: 8d0bced7-86de-406f-964f-4204f2029198
ORCID for Les Carr: ORCID iD orcid.org/0000-0002-2113-9680

Catalogue record

Date deposited: 17 Aug 2015 12:52
Last modified: 15 Mar 2024 02:33

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Contributors

Author: Jiadi Yao
Thesis advisor: Les Carr ORCID iD

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