Academic collaboration rates and citation associations vary substantially between countries and fields

TL;DR

This study analyzes international and disciplinary differences in research collaboration patterns and their impact on citation metrics across 27 fields and 10 countries, revealing significant variation in team size, authorship, and citation benefits.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive cross-national and cross-disciplinary comparison of collaboration rates and their association with citation impact, highlighting the need for tailored strategies.

Findings

Team size varies significantly by country and discipline.

Increased team size generally correlates with higher citation impact.

Solo authorship is more common and sometimes more impactful in China and India.

Abstract

Research collaboration is promoted by governments and research funders but if the relative prevalence and merits of collaboration vary internationally different national and disciplinary strategies may be needed to promote it. This study compares the team size and field normalised citation impact of research across all 27 Scopus broad fields in the ten countries with the most journal articles indexed in Scopus 2008-2012. The results show that team size varies substantially by discipline and country, with Japan (4.2) having two thirds more authors per article than the UK (2.5). Solo authorship is rare in China (4%) but common in the UK (27%). Whilst increasing team size associates with higher citation impact in almost all countries and fields, this association is much weaker in China than elsewhere. There are also field differences in the association between citation impact and collaboration. For example, larger team sizes in the Business, Management & Accounting category do not seem to associate with greater research impact, and for China and India, solo authorship associates with higher citation impact. Overall, there are substantial international and field differences in the extent to which researchers collaborate and the extent to which collaboration associates with higher citation impact.