The relationship between the number of authors of a publication, its citations and the impact factor of the publishing journal: Evidence from Italy

Abstract

Empirical evidence shows that co-authored publications achieve higher visibility and impact. The aim of the current work is to test for the existence of a similar correlation for Italian publications. We also verify if such correlation differs: (i) by subject category and macro-area; (ii) by document type; (iii) over the course of time. The results confirm world-level evidence, showing a consistent and significant linear growth in the citability of a publication with number of co-authors, in almost all subject categories. The effects are more remarkable in the fields of Social Sciences and Art & Humanities than in the Sciences - a finding not so obvious scrutinizing previous studies. Moreover, our results partly disavow the positive association between number of authors and prestige of the journal, as measured by its impact factor

Dynamics of co-authorship and productivity across different fields of scientific research

“…Within the field of information systems, for instance, total number of co-authors of a study is positively correlated with the number of citations received by that study [ 17 ]. This positive effect of total number of co-authors on citations has also been found across scientific fields in Italy [ 18 ], in the field of demography [ 19 ], as well as in Russian molecular biologists [ 20 ].…”

A bibliometric approach to tracking big data research trends

“…Hence, citation analysis helps researchers to obtain a preliminary idea about the articles and research that has an impact in a particular field of interest and it deals with the examination of the documents cited by scholarly works [29,30]. In addition, there are various bibliometric studies has been evaluated based on different metrics and applications such as forecasting emerging technologies by using bibliometric and patent analysis [31], multiple regression analysis for Japanese patent case [32], medical innovation using medical subject headings [33], based on region or countries [34][35][36], number of authors [37,38] and a bibliometric analysis based on number publications and cited references [39].…”

Journal peer review: a bar or bridge? An analysis of a paper’s revision history and turnaround time, and the effect on citation

“…As we have noted above, additionally we aim to control for factors that might affect citation. Here we took account of Baldi ( 1998 ) whose work indicated the importance of the following in influencing citation positively: the count of authors (a point on which Abramo and D’Angelo ( 2015 ) also agree); length of article; and relevance of the article to “recent work” (Baldi 1998 , p. 841) in influencing citation. The variable we constructed to describe recent work was a dummy variable coded one if the paper included any one of the top four keywords in use in the set of papers under examination.…”