Working Paper: NBER ID: w10640
Authors: James D. Adams; Grant C. Black; J. Roger Clemmons; Paula E. Stephan
Abstract: This paper explores recent trends in the size of scientific teams and in institutional collaborations. The data derive from 2.4 million scientific papers written in 110 leading U.S. research universities over the period 1981-1999. We measure team size by the number of authors on a scientific paper. Using this measure we find that team size increases by 50 percent over the 19-year period. We supplement team size with measures of domestic and foreign institutional collaborations, which capture the geographic dispersion of team workers. The time series evidence suggests that the trend towards larger and more dispersed teams accelerates at the start of the 1990s. This acceleration suggests a sudden decline in the cost of collaboration, perhaps due to improvements in telecommunications. Using a panel of top university departments we find that private universities and departments whose scientists have earned prestigious awards participate in larger teams, as do departments that have larger amounts of federal funding. Placement of former graduate students is a key determinant of institutional collaborations, especially collaborations with firms and foreign scientific institutions. Finally, the evidence indicates that scientific influence increases with team size and institutional collaborations. Since increasing team size implies an increase in the division of labor, these results suggest that scientific productivity increases with the scientific division of labor.
Keywords: scientific teams; institutional collaborations; U.S. universities; research productivity
JEL Codes: L3; O3
Edges that are evidenced by causal inference methods are in orange, and the rest are in light blue.
| Cause | Effect |
|---|---|
| size of scientific teams (C92) | division of labor (L23) |
| size of scientific teams (C92) | institutional collaborations (I29) |
| division of labor (L23) | scientific productivity (O47) |
| institutional collaborations (I29) | scientific influence (A14) |
| size of scientific teams (C92) | scientific influence (A14) |
| collaboration with foreign institutions (F55) | number of papers produced (O47) |
| collaboration with foreign institutions (F55) | citation impact (A14) |