[Sigmetrics] The Scaling Relationship between Citation-Based Performance and Scientific Collaboration in Natural Sciences

[Sylvan Katz]

The Scaling Relationship between Citation-Based Performance and 
Scientific Collaboration in Natural Sciences

The aim of this paper is to extend our knowledge about the power-law 
relationship between citation based performance and collaboration 
patterns for papers in the natural sciences. We analyzed 829,924 
articles that received 16,490,346 citations. The number of articles 
published through collaboration account for 89%. The citation-based 
performance and collaboration patterns exhibit a power-law correlation 
with a scaling exponent of 1.20 ± 0.07. Citations to a subfield’s 
research articles tended to increase 2^1.20 or 2.30 times each time it 
doubles the number of collaborative papers. The scaling exponent for the 
power-law relationship for single-authored papers was 0.85 ± 0.11. The 
citations to a subfield’s single-authored research articles increased 
2^0.85 or 1.89 times each time the research area doubles the number of 
non-collaborative papers. The Matthew effect is stronger for 
collaborated papers than for single-authored. In fact, with a scaling 
exponent < 1.0 the impact of single-author papers exhibits a cumulative 
disadvantage or inverse Matthew effect.

http://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/1510/1510.05266.pdf

-- 
Sylvan Katz
Visiting Research Fellow
http://www.sussex.ac.uk/Users/sylvank/