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No citation advantage for monograph-based collaborations?

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  • Thelwall, Mike
  • Sud, Pardeep

Abstract

It is widely believed that collaboration is advantageous in science, for example, with collaboratively written articles tending to attract more citations than solo articles and strong arguments for the value of interdisciplinary collaboration. Nevertheless, it is not known whether the same is true for research that produces books. This article tests whether co-authored scholarly monographs attract more citations than solo monographs using books published before 2011 from 30 categories in the Web of Science. The results show that solo monographs numerically dominate collaborative monographs, but give no evidence of a citation advantage for collaboration on monographs. In contrast, for nearly all these subjects (28 out of 30) there was a citation advantage for collaboratively produced journal articles. As a result, research managers and funders should not incentivise collaborative research in book-based subjects or in research that aims to produce monographs, but should allow the researchers themselves to freely decide whether to collaborate or not.

Suggested Citation

  • Thelwall, Mike & Sud, Pardeep, 2014. "No citation advantage for monograph-based collaborations?," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 8(1), pages 276-283.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:infome:v:8:y:2014:i:1:p:276-283
    DOI: 10.1016/j.joi.2013.12.008
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    5. Carolina Cañibano & Immaculada Vilardell & Carmen Corona & Carlos Benito-Amat, 2018. "The evaluation of research excellence and the dynamics of knowledge production in the humanities: The case of history in Spain," Science and Public Policy, Oxford University Press, vol. 45(6), pages 775-789.

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