Variation in research collaboration patterns across academic ranks

  • Authors:

  • Giovanni Abramo;Ciriaco Andrea D'angelo;Gianluca Murgia

  • Affiliations:

  • Laboratory for Studies of Research and Technology Transfer, Istituto di Analisi dei Sistemi e Informatica (IASI-CNR), Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche, Rome, Italy 00185;Laboratory for Studies of Research and Technology Transfer (IASI-CNR), Dipartimento di Ingegneria dell'Impresa, Università degli Studi di Roma "Tor Vergata", Rome, Italy 00133;Dipartimento di Ingegneria dell'Informazione e Science Matematiche, Università degli Studi di Siena, Siena, Italy 53100

  • Venue:
  • Scientometrics
  • Year:
  • 2014

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Abstract

The ability to activate and manage effective collaborations is becoming an increasingly important criteria in policies on academic career advancement. The rise of such policies leads to development of indicators that permit measurement of the propensity to collaborate for academics of different ranks, and to examine the role of several variables in collaboration, first among these being the researchers' disciplines. In this work we apply an innovative bibliometric approach based on individual propensity for collaboration to measure the differences in propensity across academic ranks, by discipline and for choice of collaboration forms--intramural, extramural domestic and international. The analysis is based on the scientific production of Italian academics for the period 2006---2010, totaling over 200,000 publications indexed in Web of Science. It shows that assistant professors register a propensity for intramural collaboration that is clearly greater than for professors of higher ranks. Vice versa, the higher ranks, but not quite so clearly, register greater propensity to collaborate at the international level.