IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/infome/v9y2015i4p746-761.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The relationship between the number of authors of a publication, its citations and the impact factor of the publishing journal: Evidence from Italy

Author

Listed:
  • Abramo, Giovanni
  • D’Angelo, Ciriaco Andrea

Abstract

Empirical evidence shows that co-authored publications achieve higher visibility and impact. The aim of the current work is to test for the existence of a similar correlation for Italian publications. We also verify if such correlation differs: (i) by subject category and macro-area; (ii) by document type; (iii) over the course of time. The results confirm world-level evidence, showing a consistent and significant linear growth in the citability of a publication with number of co-authors, in almost all subject categories. The effects are more remarkable in the fields of Social Sciences and Art & Humanities than in the Sciences – a finding not so obvious scrutinizing previous studies. Moreover, our results partly disavow the positive association between number of authors and prestige of the journal, as measured by its impact factor.

Suggested Citation

  • Abramo, Giovanni & D’Angelo, Ciriaco Andrea, 2015. "The relationship between the number of authors of a publication, its citations and the impact factor of the publishing journal: Evidence from Italy," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 9(4), pages 746-761.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:infome:v:9:y:2015:i:4:p:746-761
    DOI: 10.1016/j.joi.2015.07.003
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1751157715200557
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.joi.2015.07.003?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Sei‐Ching Joanna Sin, 2011. "International coauthorship and citation impact: A bibliometric study of six LIS journals, 1980–2008," Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 62(9), pages 1770-1783, September.
    2. Barrios, Maite & Guilera, Georgina & Gómez-Benito, Juana, 2013. "Impact and structural features of meta-analytical studies, standard articles and reviews in psychology: Similarities and differences," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 7(2), pages 478-486.
    3. Didegah, Fereshteh & Thelwall, Mike, 2013. "Which factors help authors produce the highest impact research? Collaboration, journal and document properties," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 7(4), pages 861-873.
    4. Hoekman, Jarno & Frenken, Koen & Tijssen, Robert J.W., 2010. "Research collaboration at a distance: Changing spatial patterns of scientific collaboration within Europe," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 39(5), pages 662-673, June.
    5. Hendrik P. van Dalen & K?ne Henkens, 2005. "Signals in science - On the importance of signaling in gaining attention in science," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 64(2), pages 209-233, August.
    6. Nick Haslam & Lauren Ban & Leah Kaufmann & Stephen Loughnan & Kim Peters & Jennifer Whelan & Sam Wilson, 2008. "What makes an article influential? Predicting impact in social and personality psychology," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 76(1), pages 169-185, July.
    7. Abramo, Giovanni & D’Angelo, Ciriaco Andrea & Murgia, Gianluca, 2013. "The collaboration behaviors of scientists in Italy: A field level analysis," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 7(2), pages 442-454.
    8. Waltman, Ludo & van Eck, Nees Jan & van Leeuwen, Thed N. & Visser, Martijn S. & van Raan, Anthony F.J., 2011. "Towards a new crown indicator: Some theoretical considerations," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 5(1), pages 37-47.
    9. Sei-Ching Joanna Sin, 2011. "International coauthorship and citation impact: A bibliometric study of six LIS journals, 1980–2008," Journal of the Association for Information Science & Technology, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 62(9), pages 1770-1783, September.
    10. Helmut A. Abt, 2007. "The future of single-authored papers," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 73(3), pages 353-358, December.
    11. Francisco José Acedo & Carmen Barroso & Cristóbal Casanueva & José Luis Galán, 2006. "Co‐Authorship in Management and Organizational Studies: An Empirical and Network Analysis," Journal of Management Studies, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 43(5), pages 957-983, July.
    12. Franceschet, Massimo & Costantini, Antonio, 2010. "The effect of scholar collaboration on impact and quality of academic papers," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 4(4), pages 540-553.
    13. Katz, J. Sylvan & Martin, Ben R., 1997. "What is research collaboration?," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 26(1), pages 1-18, March.
    14. He, Zi-Lin & Geng, Xue-Song & Campbell-Hunt, Colin, 2009. "Research collaboration and research output: A longitudinal study of 65 biomedical scientists in a New Zealand university," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 38(2), pages 306-317, March.
    15. Ulrich Schmoch & Torben Schubert, 2008. "Are international co-publications an indicator for quality of scientific research?," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 74(3), pages 361-377, March.
    16. Adams, James D. & Black, Grant C. & Clemmons, J. Roger & Stephan, Paula E., 2005. "Scientific teams and institutional collaborations: Evidence from U.S. universities, 1981-1999," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 34(3), pages 259-285, April.
    17. Fereshteh Didegah & Mike Thelwall, 2013. "Determinants of research citation impact in nanoscience and nanotechnology," Journal of the Association for Information Science & Technology, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 64(5), pages 1055-1064, May.
    18. Paul F. Skilton, 2009. "Does the human capital of teams of natural science authors predict citation frequency?," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 78(3), pages 525-542, March.
    19. María Bordons & Javier Aparicio & Rodrigo Costas, 2013. "Heterogeneity of collaboration and its relationship with research impact in a biomedical field," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 96(2), pages 443-466, August.
    20. Fereshteh Didegah & Mike Thelwall, 2013. "Determinants of research citation impact in nanoscience and nanotechnology," Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 64(5), pages 1055-1064, May.
    21. Hendrik P. Van Dalen & Kène Henkens, 2001. "What makes a scientific article influential? The case of demographers," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 50(3), pages 455-482, March.
    22. Abramo, Giovanni & Cicero, Tindaro & D’Angelo, Ciriaco Andrea, 2012. "Revisiting the scaling of citations for research assessment," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 6(4), pages 470-479.
    23. Shahadat Uddin & Liaquat Hossain & Alireza Abbasi & Kim Rasmussen, 2012. "Trend and efficiency analysis of co-authorship network," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 90(2), pages 687-699, February.
    24. Anne-Wil Harzing, 2013. "Document categories in the ISI Web of Knowledge: Misunderstanding the Social Sciences?," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 94(1), pages 23-34, January.
    25. Donald deB. Beaver, 2004. "Does collaborative research have greater epistemic authority?," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 60(3), pages 399-408, August.
    26. Waltman, Ludo & van Eck, Nees Jan, 2015. "Field-normalized citation impact indicators and the choice of an appropriate counting method," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 9(4), pages 872-894.
    27. Abramo, Giovanni & Cicero, Tindaro & D’Angelo, Ciriaco Andrea, 2011. "Assessing the varying level of impact measurement accuracy as a function of the citation window length," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 5(4), pages 659-667.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Hongquan Shen & Juan Xie & Jiang Li & Ying Cheng, 2021. "The correlation between scientific collaboration and citation count at the paper level: a meta-analysis," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 126(4), pages 3443-3470, April.
    2. Andrea Fronzetti Colladon & Ciriaco Andrea D’Angelo & Peter A. Gloor, 2020. "Predicting the future success of scientific publications through social network and semantic analysis," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 124(1), pages 357-377, July.
    3. Elizabeth S. Vieira, 2023. "The influence of research collaboration on citation impact: the countries in the European Innovation Scoreboard," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 128(6), pages 3555-3579, June.
    4. Önder, Ali Sina & Schweitzer, Sascha & Yilmazkuday, Hakan, 2021. "Specialization, field distance, and quality in economists’ collaborations," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 15(4).
    5. Tian Yu & Guang Yu & Peng-Yu Li & Liang Wang, 2014. "Citation impact prediction for scientific papers using stepwise regression analysis," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 101(2), pages 1233-1252, November.
    6. Ali Sina Önder & Sascha Schweitzer & Hakan Yilmazkuday, 2021. "Field Distance and Quality in Economists’ Collaborations," Working Papers in Economics & Finance 2021-04, University of Portsmouth, Portsmouth Business School, Economics and Finance Subject Group.
    7. Thelwall, Mike & Wilson, Paul, 2014. "Regression for citation data: An evaluation of different methods," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 8(4), pages 963-971.
    8. Fan, Lingxu & Guo, Lei & Wang, Xinhua & Xu, Liancheng & Liu, Fangai, 2022. "Does the author’s collaboration mode lead to papers’ different citation impacts? An empirical analysis based on propensity score matching," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 16(4).
    9. Juan Xie & Kaile Gong & Jiang Li & Qing Ke & Hyonchol Kang & Ying Cheng, 2019. "A probe into 66 factors which are possibly associated with the number of citations an article received," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 119(3), pages 1429-1454, June.
    10. Abramo, Giovanni & D’Angelo, Ciriaco Andrea & Murgia, Gianluca, 2013. "The collaboration behaviors of scientists in Italy: A field level analysis," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 7(2), pages 442-454.
    11. Mingyang Wang & Zhenyu Wang & Guangsheng Chen, 2019. "Which can better predict the future success of articles? Bibliometric indices or alternative metrics," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 119(3), pages 1575-1595, June.
    12. Basma Albanna & Julia Handl & Richard Heeks, 2021. "Publication outperformance among global South researchers: An analysis of individual-level and publication-level predictors of positive deviance," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 126(10), pages 8375-8431, October.
    13. Dongqing Lyu & Kaile Gong & Xuanmin Ruan & Ying Cheng & Jiang Li, 2021. "Does research collaboration influence the “disruption” of articles? Evidence from neurosciences," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 126(1), pages 287-303, January.
    14. Martorell Cunil, Onofre & Otero González, Luis & Durán Santomil, Pablo & Mulet Forteza, Carlos, 2023. "How to accomplish a highly cited paper in the tourism, leisure and hospitality field," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 157(C).
    15. Bornmann, Lutz, 2019. "Does the normalized citation impact of universities profit from certain properties of their published documents – such as the number of authors and the impact factor of the publishing journals? A mult," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 13(1), pages 170-184.
    16. Chen, Kaihua & Zhang, Yi & Fu, Xiaolan, 2019. "International research collaboration: An emerging domain of innovation studies?," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 48(1), pages 149-168.
    17. Bornmann, Lutz & Haunschild, Robin & Mutz, Rüdiger, 2020. "Should citations be field-normalized in evaluative bibliometrics? An empirical analysis based on propensity score matching," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 14(4).
    18. Iman Tahamtan & Askar Safipour Afshar & Khadijeh Ahamdzadeh, 2016. "Factors affecting number of citations: a comprehensive review of the literature," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 107(3), pages 1195-1225, June.
    19. Waltman, Ludo, 2016. "A review of the literature on citation impact indicators," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 10(2), pages 365-391.
    20. Giovanni Abramo & Ciriaco Andrea D’Angelo & Flavia Costa, 2019. "A gender analysis of top scientists’ collaboration behavior: evidence from Italy," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 120(2), pages 405-418, August.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:infome:v:9:y:2015:i:4:p:746-761. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/joi .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.