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Does it pay to cooperate? A bibliometric case study in molecular biology

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Abstract

Various bibliometric studies report that multiinstitutional or multinational authored papers are more frequently cited than papers that come from a single institute. The conclusion, however, that there is a systematic improvement of scientific success by cooperation on every level of scientific research in leading or mediocre research institutes might be misleading: In a citation analysis of 13 well-known research institutes in molecular biology there was no difference in the average citations per paper with regard to cooperations. In a subsample of 7 German institutes that difference found could be explained by selfcitations. In another case, all articles of a two year sample of an excellent journal in molecular biology, the EMBO-Journal, the same phenomenon could be observed: Differences in the average citations per article with regard to cooperations could be explained by selfcitations.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute for Genetics, University of Cologne, (Germany)

    H. Herbertz

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  1. H. Herbertz
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Herbertz, H. Does it pay to cooperate? A bibliometric case study in molecular biology. Scientometrics 33, 117–122 (1995). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02020777

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02020777

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