Early-stage reciprocity in sustainable scientific collaboration

Wei Wang, Jing Ren, Mubarak Alrashoud, Feng Xia, Mengyi Mao and Amr Tolba

Journal of Informetrics, 2020, vol. 14, issue 3

Abstract: Scientific collaboration is of significant importance in tackling grand challenges and breeding innovations. Despite the increasing interest in investigating and promoting scientific collaborations, we know little about the collaboration sustainability as well as mechanisms behind it. In this paper, we set out to study the relationships between early-stage reciprocity and collaboration sustainability. By proposing and defining h-index reciprocity, we give a comprehensive statistical analysis on how reciprocity influences scientific collaboration sustainability, and find that scholars are not altruism and the key to sustainable collaboration is fairness. The unfair h-index reciprocity has an obvious negative impact on collaboration sustainability. The bigger the reciprocity difference, the less sustainable in collaboration. This work facilitates understanding sustainable collaborations and thus will benefit both individual scholar in optimizing collaboration strategies and the whole academic society in improving teamwork efficiency.

Keywords: Scientific collaboration; Reciprocity; Collaboration sustainability; Science of science (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:infome:v:14:y:2020:i:3:s1751157719302779

DOI: 10.1016/j.joi.2020.101041

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