Bob Yirka is a research scientist at Phys.org.
A small team of researchers at Beijing Normal University working with a colleague from Bar-Ilan University discovered that researchers who collaborate with other researchers in multiple research areas tend to publish more highly cited papers. In their paper published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the group describes analyzing the authorship of papers published in the journal American Physical Society and what they learned about collaboration.
A paper describing a researcher's work can be submitted to a journal for publication. Researchers hope that by sharing what they have learned, they can be recognized for their accomplishments. Some people cite their work as part of their own process when they conduct new research and publish their own papers. The researchers were wondering how collaboration between researchers might affect citations.
3,420 researchers were identified who had published at least 50 papers and then looked at citations for those papers and the background of other people who collaborated with them.
Almost all of the researchers collaborated with people in a small number of fields. The researchers who published the most papers had an average number of citations. The researchers who worked with colleagues from multiple fields tended to have more impact and published more papers. Since the 1940's, the ratio of multi-topic collaborations has been increasing.
According to the researchers, science research is still dominated by single-topic research efforts, which tends to lead to less innovative results than multi-field collaborations.
More information: An Zeng et al, Impactful scientists have higher tendency to involve collaborators in new topics, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (2022). DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2207436119 Journal information: Proceedings of the National Academy of SciencesThere is a science network.
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