Want to be highly cited? Work with collaborators across multiple research fields, study finds Shri Radhe

Researchers who repeatedly collaborate with other scientists across multiple research disciplines produce papers that are more highly cited. That’s according to an analysis of more than 3000 scientists who publish in physical-science journals. But scientists who prefer to stick to single research topics tend, on average, to produce more papers than their peers (Proc. Natl Acad. Sci..

Carried out by a team led by Shlomo Havlin, a physicist at Bar-Ilan University in Israel, the study identified 3420 scientists who had published at least 50 papers in American Physical Society (APS) journals. For each of these “focal” scientists, the team picked out collaborators in the APS dataset who had co-authored at least two papers with them..

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Want to be highly cited? Work with collaborators across multiple research fields, study finds

24 Aug 2022

two people talking at a table

Getting together: Scientists with high citation rates are more likely to collaborate with peers who have many publications and high citations per paper (Courtesy: iStock/Weekend Images Inc).

Researchers who repeatedly collaborate with other scientists across multiple research disciplines produce papers that are more highly cited. That’s according to an analysis of more than 3000 scientists who publish in physical-science journals. But scientists who prefer to stick to single research topics tend, on average, to produce more papers than their peers (Proc. Natl Acad. Sci. 119 e2207436119).

Carried out by a team led by Shlomo Havlin, a physicist at Bar-Ilan University in Israel, the study identified 3420 scientists who had published at least 50 papers in American Physical Society (APS) journals. For each of these “focal” scientists, the team picked out collaborators in the APS dataset who had co-authored at least two papers with them.

When the researchers examined the topics covered by the collaboration networks, they discovered that scientists work with collaborators on a relatively limited number of different fields. On average, 63% of a scientist’s collaborators work with them on just a single research topic. A quarter of collaborations cover two research topics, while only 12% span three or more topics.

The team also examined how successful scientists work with their collaborators. Two metrics of success were used: productivity (measured by the total number of publications) and impact (average number of citations with two seconds...

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Want to be highly cited? Work with collaborators across multiple research fields, study finds

24 Aug 2022

two people talking at a table

Getting together: Scientists with high citation rates are more likely to collaborate with peers who have many publications and high citations per paper (Courtesy: iStock/Weekend Images Inc).

Researchers who repeatedly collaborate with other scientists across multiple research disciplines produce papers that are more highly cited. That’s according to an analysis of more than 3000 scientists who publish in physical-science journals. But scientists who prefer to stick to single research topics tend, on average, to produce more papers than their peers (Proc. Natl Acad. Sci. 119 e2207436119).

Carried out by a team led by Shlomo Havlin, a physicist at Bar-Ilan University in Israel, the study identified 3420 scientists who had published at least 50 papers in American Physical Society (APS) journals. For each of these “focal” scientists, the team picked out collaborators in the APS dataset who had co-authored at least two papers with them.

When the researchers examined the topics covered by the collaboration networks, they discovered that scientists work with collaborators on a relatively limited number of different fields. On average, 63% of a scientist’s collaborators work with them on just a single research topic. A quarter of collaborations cover two research topics, while only 12% span three or more topics.

The team also examined how successful scientists work with their collaborators. Two metrics of success were used: productivity (measured by the total number of publications) and impact (average number of citations per paper).

It turns out that the most productive scientists have a high proportion of single-topic collaborators, but only an average citation impact. Researchers with the highest impact, on the other hand, have more collaborators who they work with on multiple topics, yet are only as productive as the average scientist.

Keeping a balance

The study’s authors suggest that impactful scientists lean towards collaborators sharing similar research interests, while those who publish more papers select collaborators who specialize in a particular topic. Compared with more productive scientists, those researchers with high citation rates are more likely to collaborate with peers with many publications and high citations per paper.