What is research collaboration?

doi:10.1016/S0048-7333(96)00917-1

Research Policy

Volume 26, Issue 1, March 1997, Pages 1-18

https://doi.org/10.1016/S0048-7333(96)00917-1 Get rights and content

Abstract

Although there have been many previous studies of research collaboration, comparatively little attention has been given to the concept of ‘collaboration’ or to the adequacy of attempting to measure it through co-authorship. In this paper, we distinguish between collaboration at different levels and show that inter-institutional and international collaboration need not necessarily involve inter-individual collaboration. We also show that co-authorship is no more than a partial indicator of collaboration. Lastly, we argue for a more symmetrical approach in comparing the costs of collaboration with the undoubted benefits when considering policies towards research collaboration.

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^☆: The authors are grateful to the Economic and Social Research Council for support, first through the programmes on ‘Academic Research Performance Indicators; and `The Interface Between Corporate R&D and Academic Research’, and currently through the ESRC Centre for Science, Technology, Energy and Environment Policy (STEEP). They would also like to thank Dr. Diana Hicks, Phoebe Isard and Dr. Terttu Luukkonen for comments on an earlier version of the paper.

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What is research collaboration?☆

Abstract

Multiple authorship and author collaboration in agricultural research publications

Journal of Research Communication Studies

Studies in scientific collaboration: Part I—The professional origins of scientific co-authorship

Scientometrics

Studies in scientific collaboration: Part II—Scientific co-authorship, research productivity and visibility in the French scientific elite, 1799–1830

Scientometrics

Studies in scientific collaboration: Part III—Professionalization and the natural history of modern scientific co-authorship

Scientometrics

International co-authorship patterns in physics and its subfields, 1981–1985

Scientometrics

Teamwork and creativity in research

Science Quarterly

Multiple authorship trends in scientific papers

Science

Communication patterns of biomedical scientists

The TEA set: Tacit knowledge and scientific networks

Science Studies

Invisible Colleges

The money value of citations to single-authored and multiple-authored articles

Scientometrics

Astronomy Transformed: The Emergence of Radio Astronomy in Britain

Quantitative measures of communication in science: A critical review

History of Science

Stealing into Print

International research collaboration

Science

Group effort in modern physics

Science

Scientific Information Systems and the Principle of Selectivity

A critical reassessment of inferred relations between multiple authorship, scientific collaboration, the production of papers and their acceptance for publication

Scientometrics

The Scientific Community

Collaboration dance

Funded research, multiple authorship, and subauthorship collaboration in four disciplines

Scientometrics

Migration and the generation of new scientific ideas

Minerva

Limits to collaborative authorship in science publishing

Journal of Research Communications Studies

The Sources of Invention

Bibliometric assessment of intranational university-university collaboration

Technology fusion and the new R&D

Harvard Business Review

Patterns of contact and communication in scientific research collaboration

The Structure of Scientific Revolutions

Some bibliometric correlates of quality in scientific research

Scientometrics

Bibliometric studies for the evaluation of transnational research

Scientometrics

The frequency distribution of scientific productivity

Journal of the Washington Academy of Science