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Is the immediacy index of co-authored papers higher than that of single-authored ones?

O índice de imediatez de artigos em coautoria é maior do que o de um único autor?

Abstract

The study extends the conversation on the effect that co-authorship has on the citation impact of papers by analyzing the short-term advantage of co-authored papers. The results suggest that co-authored papers have a higher short-term impact than single-authored ones in all scientific domains. The study adds insights on the use of the immediacy index as an alternative indicator to evaluate the short-term competitive advantage of co-authored papers concerning the number of citations they attract. Furthermore, the study shows the efficacy of the immediacy index in comparing the short-term impact of different groups.

Keywords
Citation analysis; Collaboration; Co-authorship; Immediacy index; Multi-authorship

Resumo

O estudo estende a conversa sobre o efeito que a coautoria tem no impacto da citação de artigos, analisando a vantagem de curto prazo de artigos em coautoria. Os resultados sugerem que artigos em coautoria têm maior impacto em curto prazo do que artigos em autoria única em todos os domínios científicos. O estudo adiciona insights sobre o uso do índice de imediatismo como um indicador alternativo para avaliar a vantagem competitiva de curto prazo de artigos em coautoria quanto ao número de citações que eles atraem. Além disso, o estudo mostra a eficácia do índice de imediatismo para comparar o impacto de curto prazo de diferentes grupos.

Palavras-chave
Análise de citações; Colaboração; Coautoria; índice de imediatez; multiautoria

Introduction

Since Beaver and Rosen (1978Beaver, D. B.; Rosen, R. Studies in scientific collaboration. Scientometrics, v. 1, n. 1, p. 65-84, 1978. Available from: https://apps.webofknowledge.com/full_record.do?product=WOS&search_mode=GeneralSearch&qid=21&SID=7EehyJFxPG68kxt5HJx&page=1&doc=3
https://apps.webofknowledge.com/full_rec...
, 1979aBeaver, D. B.; Rosen, R. Studies in scientific collaboration. Scientometrics, v. 1, n. 2, p. 133-149, 1979a. Available from: http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2FBF02016966. Cited: Jun. 21, 2022.
http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007...
, 1979b)Beaver, D. B.; Rosen, R. Studies in scientific collaboration Part III. Professionalization and the natural history of modern scientific co-authorship. Scientometrics, v. 1, n. 3, p. 231-245, 1979b. Available from: http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2FBF02016308. Cited: Jun. 21, 2022.
http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007...
introduced the subject-matter of academic collaboration into the academic conversation among Scientometrics scholars, interest in this topic has continued to grow. One of the core questions to be answered has been the effect of collaborative activities on the number of citations that papers receive. The knowledge produced in this line of research has grown significantly and has become the most attractive topic for collaborative researchers, mainly in the Scientometrics scientific community.

There is a great deal of studies analyzing the possible influence that academic collaboration, via co-authorships, has on the citation performance of papers (Katz; Hicks, 1997Katz, J. S.; Hicks, D. How much is a collaboration worth? A calibrated bibliometric model. Scientometrics, v. 40, n. 3, p. 541-554, 1997. Doi: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02459299
https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02459299...
; Katz; Martin, 1997Katz, J. S.; Martin, B. R. What is research collaboration? Research Policy, v. 26, n. 1, p. 1-18, 1997. Doi: https://doi.org/10.1016/S0048-7333(96)00917-1
https://doi.org/10.1016/S0048-7333(96)00...
; Glänzel, 2000Glänzel, W. A Bibliometric analysis of co-authorship patterns of eleven east central European Countries in the 90s. Researchgate.net, 2000. Available from: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Shivappa-Sangam/publication/263557827_Research_collaboration_in_the_field_of_social_sciences/links/0c96053b6929b840c5000000/Research-collaboration-in-the-field-of-social-sciences.pdf#page=93. Cited: Jun. 23, 2021.
https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Shi...
, 2002Glänzel, W. Coauthorship patterns and trends in the sciences (1980-1998): a bibliometric study with Implications for Database Indexing and Search Strategies. Library Trends, v. 50, n. 3, p. 461-473, 2002. Available from: https://apps.webofknowledge.com/full_record.do?product=WOS&search_mode=GeneralSearch&qid=27&SID=7EehyJFxPG68kxt5HJx&page=1&doc=1. Cited: Jun. 23, 2021.
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; Glänzel; Schubert, 2001Glänzel, W.; Schubert, A. Doble effort = Doble Impact? A critical view at international co-authorship in chemestry. Scientometrics, v. 50, n. 2, p. 199-214, 2001. Doi: https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1010561321723
https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1010561321723...
, 2005Glänzel, W.; Schubert, A. Analysing scientific networks through co-authorship. In: Moed, H. F.; Glänzel, W.; Schmoch, U. (Ed.). Handbook of quantitative science and technology research. Switzerland: Springer, 2005. p. 257-276.; Rousseau; Ding, 2016Rousseau, R.; Ding, J. Does international collaboration yield a higher citation potential for US scientists publishing in highly visible interdisciplinary Journals? Journal of the Association for Information Science and Technology, v. 67, n. 4, p. 1009-1013, 2016. Doi: https://doi.org/10.1002/asi.23565
https://doi.org/10.1002/asi.23565...
). In general, the results show that there is a lack of consensus to either support or reject the hypothesis that co-authorship is indeed a driver to increase the number of citations that papers receive.

The relationship between co-authorship patterns and citation impact has been explored using different approaches in a diverse number of research fields. i.e., information science (Levitt; Thelwall, 2016Levitt, J. M.; Thelwall, M. Long term productivity and collaboration in information science. Scientometrics, v. 108, n. 3, p. 1103-1117, 2016. Doi: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-016-2061-8
https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-016-2061-...
), informetrics (Abrizah et al., 2014Abrizah, A. et al. Sixty-four years of informetrics research: productivity, impact and collaboration. Scientometrics, v. 101, n. 1, p. 569-585, 2014. Doi: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-014-1390-8
https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-014-1390-...
), computer science (Ibáñez; Bielza; Larrañaga, 2012Ibáñez, A.; Bielza, C.; Larrañaga, P. Relationship among research collaboration, number of documents and number of citations: a case study in Spanish computer science production in 2000-2009. Scientometrics, v. 95, n. 2, p. 689-716, 2012. Doi: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-012-0883-6
https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-012-0883-...
), Finance (Avkiran, 2012Avkiran, N. K. An empirical investigation of the influence of collaboration in Finance on article impact. Scientometrics, v. 95, n. 3, p. 911-925, 2012. Doi: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-012-0892-5
https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-012-0892-...
), strategic management (Ronda-Pupo; Guerras-Martín, 2010Ronda-Pupo, G. A.; Guerras-Martín, L. Á. Dynamics of the scientific community network within the strategic management field through the Strategic Management Journal 1980-2009: the role of cooperation. Scientometrics, v. 85, n. 3, p. 821-848, 2010. Doi: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-010-0287-4
https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-010-0287-...
), and Economics (Levitt; Thelwall, 2010Levitt, J. M.; Thelwall, M. Does the higher citation of collaborative research differ from region to region? A case study of economics. Scientometrics, v. 85, n. 1, p. 171-183, 2010. Doi: https://doi.org/10.1016/S0048-7333(96)00917-1
https://doi.org/10.1016/S0048-7333(96)00...
). Those previous studies mainly analyzed the medium or long-term effect of co-authorship on citation impact. The literature lacks studies on the short-term effect of co-authorship on citation impact.

In recent years, collaboration researchers have shifted their attention to analyzing the effects of internationally collaboration papers on their citation impact (Rousseau; Ding, 2016Rousseau, R.; Ding, J. Does international collaboration yield a higher citation potential for US scientists publishing in highly visible interdisciplinary Journals? Journal of the Association for Information Science and Technology, v. 67, n. 4, p. 1009-1013, 2016. Doi: https://doi.org/10.1002/asi.23565
https://doi.org/10.1002/asi.23565...
; Wagner; Whetsell; Leydesdorff, 2017Wagner, C. S.; Whetsell, T. A.; Leydesdorff, L. Growth of international collaboration in science: revisiting six specialties. Scientometrics v. 110, n. 3, p. 1633-1652, 2017. Doi: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-016-2230-9
https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-016-2230-...
), the relationship between the position of countries in the co-authorship networks and their citation performance (Sadatmoosavi et al., 2018Sadatmoosavi, A. et al. Does the superior position of countries in co-authorship networks lead to their high citation performance. Malaysian Journal of Library & Information Science, v. 23, n. 1, p. 51-65, 2018. Doi: https://doi.org/10.22452/mjlis.vol23no1.4
https://doi.org/10.22452/mjlis.vol23no1....
), and international co-authorships among institutions (Gazni; Thelwall, 2016Gazni, A.; Thelwall, M. The citation impact of collaboration between top institutions: a temporal analysis. Research Evaluation, v. 25, n. 2, p. 219-229, 2016. Doi: https://doi.org/10.1093/reseval/rvv039
https://doi.org/10.1093/reseval/rvv039...
; Ronda-Pupo; Guerras-Martín, 2016Ronda-Pupo, G. A.; Guerras-Martín, L. Á. Collaboration network of knowledge creation and dissemination on management research: ranking the leading institutions. Scientometrics, v. 107, n. 3, p. 917-939, 2016. Doi: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-016-1924-3
https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-016-1924-...
), countries (Aman, 2016Aman, V. How collaboration impacts citation flows within the German science system. Scientometrics, v. 109, n. 3, p. 2195-2216, 2016. Doi: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-016-2092-1
https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-016-2092-...
; Zhang et al., 2016Zhang, Y. et al. Inter-organizational scientific collaborations and policy effects: an ego-network evolutionary perspective of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. Scientometrics, v. 108, n. 3, p. 1383-1415, 2016. Doi: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-016-2022-2
https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-016-2022-...
) or regions (Aldieri; Kotsemir; Vinci, 2018Aldieri, L.; Kotsemir, M.; Vinci, C. P. The impact of research collaboration on academic performance: an empirical analysis for some European countries. Socio-Economic Planning Sciences, v. 62, p. 13-30, 2018. Doi: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.seps.2017.05.003
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.seps.2017.05.0...
). Other studies focused their attention on international collaboration patterns among elites i.e., the collaboration between developed countries (Adams; Gurney, 2018Adams, J.; Gurney, K. A. Bilateral and multilateral coauthorship and citation impact: patterns in UK and US international Collaboration. Frontiers in Research Metrics and Analytics, v. 3, 2018. Doi: https://doi.org/10.3389/frma.2018.00012
https://doi.org/10.3389/frma.2018.00012...
) or among elite scientists (Abramo; D’angelo; Di Costa, 2018Abramo, G.; D’angelo, C. A.; Di Costa, F. The collaboration behavior of top scientists. Scientometrics, v. 118, n. 1, p. 215-232, 2018. Doi: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-018-2970-9
https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-018-2970-...
). The exploration of the short-term influence of international co-authorships on the citation impact of papers will add insight into this relationship.

In general, the previous studies shed light on the relationship between co-authorships and the citation patterns of papers using different citation-based indicators and different citation thresholds. The literature lacks studies on the short-term effects on citation patterns comparing co-authored papers and single-authored papers. The objective of the study is to analyze the short-term advantage of co-authored papers concerning the number of citations they attract using a large-scale exploration of papers published in the Web of Science database, including journals in all scientific domains in 2012.

The study analyzed 908,827 papers published in 2012 in 430 journals in the Clarivate Analytics’ Web of Science Core Collection database. The results are aimed at decision and policy makers, researchers on collaborative strategies, and individual scholars wanting to formulate a collaboration strategy.

Related work

The immediacy index measures the percentage of articles that receive citations in the very first year they are published. Previous studies using the immediacy index as a citation-based impact indicator range from 1981 through 2016. The literature on this subject-matter is split into two main lines of research. The first deals with the analysis of journals and their impact factor (Asai, 1981Asai, I. Adjusted age distribution and its application to impact factor and immediacy index. Journal of the American Society for Information Science, v. 32, n. 3, p. 172-174, 1981. Doi: https://doi.org/10.1002/asi.4630320303
https://doi.org/10.1002/asi.4630320303...
; Tomer, 1986Tomer, C. A statistical assessment of 2 measures of citation - The impact factor and the inmediacy index. Information Processing & Management, v. 22, n. 3, p. 251-258, 1986. Doi: https://doi.org/10.1016/0306-4573(86)90057-9
https://doi.org/10.1016/0306-4573(86)900...
; Magri; Solari, 1996Magri, M.; Solari, A. The SCI Journal Citation Reports: a potential tool for studying journals? .1. Description of the JCR journal population based on the number of citations received, number of source items, impact factor, immediacy index and cited half-life. Scientometrics, v. 35, n. 1, p. 93-117, 1996. Doi: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02018235
https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02018235...
; Richmond, 2004Richmond, J. P. The new impact factor of 3.783 and immediacy index of 1.135 for advanced synthesis & catalysis surpass even the most optimistic predictions. Advanced Synthesis & Catalysis, v. 346, n. 8, p. 887-888, 2004. Doi: https://doi.org/10.1002/adsc.200404214
https://doi.org/10.1002/adsc.200404214...
; Yue; Wilson; Rousseau, 2004Yue, W. P.; Wilson, C. S.; Rousseau, R. The immediacy index and the journal impact factor: Two highly correlated derived measures. Canadian Journal of Information and Library Science-Revue Canadienne Des Sciences De L Information Et De Bibliotheconomie, v. 28, n. 1, p. 33-48, 2004.; Menezes; Mohankumar, 2006Menezes, R. G.; Mohankumar, T. S. ‘Impact factor’ and ‘immediacy index’ of the National Medical Journal of India. National Medical Journal of India, v. 19, n. 5, p. 295-296, 2006. Available from: https://apps.webofknowledge.com/full_record.do?product=WOS&search_mode=GeneralSearch&qid=64&SID=7EehyJFxPG68kxt5HJx&page=1&doc=1. Cited: 21 jun. 2021.
https://apps.webofknowledge.com/full_rec...
; Wan et al., 2010Wang, J. K. et al. The journal download immediacy index (DII): experiences using a Chinese full-text database. Scientometrics, v. 82, n. 3, p. 555-566, 2010. Doi: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-010-0171-2
https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-010-0171-...
; Huang; Lin, 2012Huang, M. H.; Lin, W. Y. C. The influence of journal self-citations on journal impact factor and immediacy index. Online Information Review, v. 36, n. 5, p. 639-654, 2012. Doi: https://doi.org/10.1108/14684521211275957
https://doi.org/10.1108/1468452121127595...
).

The second line of research deals with the use of the immediacy index to detect hot topics within a single field of research (Buriak, 2015Buriak, J. M. Hot topics in materials chemistry and the immediacy index long-term versus short-term impact. Chemistry of Materials, v. 27, n. 4, p. 1147-1148, 2015. Doi: https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.chemmater.5b00463
https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.chemmater.5b...
), the evaluation of the short-term impact of individual fields as Molecular Psychiatry (Licinio, 1998Licinio, J. Molecular Psychiatry 1996: high immediacy index. Molecular Psychiatry, v. 3, n. 2, p. IV-IV, Mar 1998. Doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/sj.mp.4000111
https://doi.org/10.1038/sj.mp.4000111...
, 2006Licinio, J. Molecular Psychiatry: the highest immediacy index in the field of psychiatry. Molecular Psychiatry, v. 11, n. 4, p. 324-324, 2006. Doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/sj.mp.4001820
https://doi.org/10.1038/sj.mp.4001820...
), Environmental Science (Grassian, 2016Grassian, V. H. Environmental Science: Nano - immediacy index and more. Environmental Science-Nano, v. 3, n. 2, p. 234-235, 2016. Doi: https://doi.org/10.1039/c6en90007k
https://doi.org/10.1039/c6en90007k...
), Materials Chemistry (Buriak, 2015Buriak, J. M. Hot topics in materials chemistry and the immediacy index long-term versus short-term impact. Chemistry of Materials, v. 27, n. 4, p. 1147-1148, 2015. Doi: https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.chemmater.5b00463
https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.chemmater.5b...
), and advanced synthesis & catalysis (Richmond, 2004Richmond, J. P. The new impact factor of 3.783 and immediacy index of 1.135 for advanced synthesis & catalysis surpass even the most optimistic predictions. Advanced Synthesis & Catalysis, v. 346, n. 8, p. 887-888, 2004. Doi: https://doi.org/10.1002/adsc.200404214
https://doi.org/10.1002/adsc.200404214...
).

The previous studies show the efficacy of the immediacy index for detecting journals or topics that capture the attention of the scientific community in the very first instant they appear. The present study, unlike previous ones, uses the immediacy index to compare the short-term citation impact according to co-authorship patterns of papers in all scientific domains. The hypothesis to be tested is:

Co-authored papers will show a higher Immediacy Index than single-authored papers.

Methodological Procedures

The data

The data for the study consists of 908,827 papers (articles, reviews, notes, and letters) published in 2012 in 430 journals in the Clarivate Analytics’ Web of Science Core Collection database.

Organization of the data

The Science Metrix journal classification ontology was used to assign each paper to a single and mutually exclusive scientific domain (Archambault; Beauchesne; Caruso, 2015Archambault, É.; Beauchesne, O. H.; Caruso, J. Towards a multilingual, comprehensive and open scientific journal ontology. Science Metrix.com, 2015. Available from: http://www.science-metrix.com/pdf/Towards_a_Multilingual_Comprehensive_and_Open.pdf. Cited: March 28, 2022.
http://www.science-metrix.com/pdf/Toward...
). For consideration of the advantages and technical background of the Science Metrix ontology, see Ronda-Pupo and Katz (2017)Ronda-Pupo, G. A.; Katz, J. S. The Scaling relationship between citation-based performance and scientific collaboration in Natural Sciences. Journal of the Association for Information Science and Technology, v. 68, n. 5, p. 1257–1265, 2017. Doi: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-016-1939-9
https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-016-1939-...
.

Variables

Dependent variable

The Immediacy Index: Is the average number of times an article is cited in the year it is published (Minnick, 2017Minnick, J. Know your metrics: immediacy index. Clarivate Analytics: Clarivate Analytics, 2017.). The Immediacy Index is used mainly to measure the impact at the level of journals. It is calculated by dividing the number of citations to articles published in a given year by the number of articles published in that year. Below is an example of the expression for calculating the immediacy index of co-authored papers in 2018.

Immediacy Index (Co-authored) = (Citations to Co-authored papers published in 2018) (Number of Co-authored papers published in 2018)

Independent variable

Co-authored paper: a paper that is signed by more than one author. The number of co-authored papers in a domain is the total of co-authored papers published in journals of that domain.

Single-authored paper: a paper published by a solo author. The number of single-authored papers in a domain is the total of solo papers published in journals of that domain.

Statistical procedures

The “Mann-Whitney Rank Sum Test” nonparametric was used to test for statistically significant differences in ranks between the two groups (Single-authored vs. Co-authored) and the Immediacy Index. This was chosen because citation counts do not meet the assumption of normal distribution for a parametric statistical test. To check for the robustness of the results we use the effect size suggested by Cohen (1988)Cohen, J. Statistical power and analysis for the behavioral sciences. 2. ed. New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum, 1988.. Cohen’s (1988)Cohen, J. Statistical power and analysis for the behavioral sciences. 2. ed. New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum, 1988. suggestion needs the value of the correlation r. As the Mann-Whitney U nonparametric test does not provide the r value in the output to measure effect size, it was calculated using the Morgan et al. (2013)Morgan, G. A. et al. IBM SPSS for introductory statistics: use and interpretation. 4. ed. New York: Routledge Taylor & Francis Group, 2013. conversion formula r=ZN.

Results

Table 1 presents the number of papers in each domain according to their authorship patterns. More than one author signs 91% of the papers. Co-authored papers account for 95% of citations.

Table 1
The number of papers and citations of domains in 2012.

Table 2 shows that the percentage of papers that receive citations in the year they were published is notably higher in co-authored papers than in single-authored ones in all domains. Only 5% of solo papers received citations in the year they were published. The domain with the highest difference is Multidisciplinary. There is a smaller gap between cited/non-cited papers in the Economic & Social Sciences and Health Sciences domains.

Table 2
Percentages of papers cited in 2012.

Table 3 shows the length of the distributions according to authorship patterns. Except for the Arts & Humanities and Economic & Social Sciences domains, multi-authored papers have lengthier distributions than single-authored papers. The Natural Sciences and Health Sciences domains have lengthier distributions.

Table 3
Length of distribution.

The immediacy index

The results presented in Table 4 suggest that the short-term citation impact of Co-authored papers, measured using the immediacy index, is higher than for single-authored ones in all domains. Multidisciplinary co-authored papers show a greater difference. Multidisciplinary includes the most influential journals such as Science, Nature, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America (PNAS), PLOS, and Frontiers, among others. The Economic & Social Sciences domains show the smallest difference. In general, it is known that social sciences domains attract a smaller number of citations than natural, applied, and health sciences.

Table 4
The Immediacy Index of 2012 papers for domains according to authorship patterns.

Hypothesis test

The nonparametric Mann-Whitney Rank Sum to test for statistically significant differences in ranks between the two groups (Single-authored vs. Co-authored) and the Immediacy Index was run because the normal distribution of the dependent variable was not met P=0.005, and the variances are unequal Levene=2.008,p=0.05. The difference in the median values between the two groups is greater than would be expected by chance; there is a statistically significant difference (Mann-Whitney U Statistic= 9.00,p < 0.05). Co-authored articles have higher ranks (0.610) than single-authored articles (0.290) on the immediacy index U= 37.00,p= 0.048,r= 0.52, a “larger than typical” effect according to Cohen (1988)Cohen, J. Statistical power and analysis for the behavioral sciences. 2. ed. New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum, 1988. guidelines. As the Mann-Whitney U nonparametric test does not provide the r value in the output to measure effect size, it was calculated using the Morgan et al. (2013)Morgan, G. A. et al. IBM SPSS for introductory statistics: use and interpretation. 4. ed. New York: Routledge Taylor & Francis Group, 2013. conversion formula r=ZN. The values of z and N are provided in the U Test Statistic table.

According to the results, the hypothesis is supported, and it is concluded that co-authored papers have a short-term competitive advantage over single-authored ones. Co-authored papers capture the attention of scientific communities faster than single-authored papers.

The multiplicative effect of the social capital of the paper’s authors is a competitive advantage that enhances the impact of the manuscript. It represents a driver to enhance the citation impact because co-authored papers have a higher probability of being noticed. For example, if five authors publish a paper, they will let their network of colleagues know about their paper, while solo-authored papers only have the social network of a single author. The process of dissemination of co-authored papers is more effective than for single-authored papers.

Discussion and Conclusion

The present study examined the short-term influence of co-authorship on the citation impact of papers for all domains. The results support the hypothesis that co-authorship represents a competitive advantage that enhances the number of citations that papers will receive in the year they are published. There are no prior results in the literature reporting on the correlation between the immediacy index and co-authorship. In general, no consensus has been reached about the relationship between scientific collaboration and citation count (Shen et al., 2021Shen, H. et al. The correlation between scientific collaboration and citation count at the paper level: a meta-analysis. Scientometrics, v. 126, n. 4, p. 3443-3470, 2021. Doi: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-021-03888-0
https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-021-03888...
). The result of the study supports the prior results that report that papers published by more than one author receive a greater number of citations (Katz; Hicks, 1997Katz, J. S.; Hicks, D. How much is a collaboration worth? A calibrated bibliometric model. Scientometrics, v. 40, n. 3, p. 541-554, 1997. Doi: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02459299
https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02459299...
; Shen et al., 2021Shen, H. et al. The correlation between scientific collaboration and citation count at the paper level: a meta-analysis. Scientometrics, v. 126, n. 4, p. 3443-3470, 2021. Doi: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-021-03888-0
https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-021-03888...
). This study adds a competitive advantage for co-authored papers, which attract a greater number of citations in the short-term – the year in which they are published – than papers that are published by a single author.

The practical implication of this result is twofold. Firstly, it supports the collaboration strategy for enhancing the citation impact of papers. Specifically, they obtain a greater number of citations in the short-term. Secondly, it shows the efficacy of the immediacy index as a measure of the short-term impact of papers at the level of domains. Furthermore, it is a useful tool for making comparisons between two groups.

The research opens new research questions such as: how does the immediacy index of co-authored papers compare to that of single-authored ones at the level of sub-fields? Can the immediacy index be used to compare the short-term impact at different levels of aggregations i.e., departments, institutions, countries, and regions? Also, for the comparison of the short-term impact of international and domestic co-authorships.

Acknowledgments

Our gratitude to two anonymous reviewers for interesting suggestions.

Como citar este artigo/How to cite this article

References

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Publication Dates

  • Publication in this collection
    10 Oct 2022
  • Date of issue
    2022

History

  • Received
    08 Nov 2021
  • Reviewed
    31 Mar 2022
  • Accepted
    11 May 2022
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