Impact of co-authorship strategies on research productivity: a social-network analysis of publications in Russian cardiology.

Abstract

This study explores how the choice of a co-authorship strategy determines individual research productivity measured in terms of quantity of publications. The exploration is conducted in the specific context of Russian cardiologic research.The concept of social capital is used to explain the relationship between co-authorship and increased research productivity. The methodology for theoretical classification and empirical determination of co-authorship strategies is based on theoretical and methodological foundations borrowed from social network analysis. Two competing theories explaining the relationship between social network structure and social capital by Coleman (1988) and Burt (1992) are used to classify and to determine empirically co-authorship strategies. The study is conducted in three phases. First, social network analysis is used to determine the co-authorship strategy of each researcher in the study. Second, analysis of variance is applied to determine the effect of co-authorship strategies on individual research productivity. Third, sensitivity analysis is conducted to determine whether the results hold under different assumptions. The results indicate that co-authorship strategies have differential effects on research productivity and that the bridging strategy, in which a researcher serves as a broker between other researchers, is the most productive in Russian cardiologic research. This finding is consistent with the results of a prior study on the effect of co-authorship strategies on individual research productivity in the US research in higher education (Rumsey-Wairepo, 2006). The study supports Burt's (1992) theory of structural holes in explaining how social network structure creates social capital.