The effect of multidisciplinary collaborations on research diversification

TL;DR

This study investigates how collaboration with multidisciplinary teams influences research diversification among Italian scientists, revealing that such collaborations significantly promote diversified research outputs, especially with larger and more varied teams.

Contribution

It provides empirical evidence linking multidisciplinary collaborations to increased research diversification, highlighting the importance of team composition.

Findings

Collaborations with multidisciplinary teams are associated with higher research diversification.

The effect is stronger with larger and more diversified teams.

The phenomenon is consistent across different scientific macro-areas.

Abstract

This work verifies whether research diversification by a scientist is in some measure related to their collaboration with multidisciplinary teams. The analysis considers the publications achieved by 5300 Italian academics in the sciences over the period 2004-2008. The findings show that a scientist's outputs resulting from research diversification are more often than not the result of collaborations with multidisciplinary teams. The effect becomes more pronounced with larger and particularly with more diversified teams. This phenomenon is observed both at the overall level and for the disciplinary macro-areas.