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Co-authorship as a proxy for collaboration: a cautionary tale

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  • Michael Kahn

Abstract

International scientific collaboration has risen in the last two decades. Publications using mega-science data must conform to ‘rules of use’ that have emerged to protect the intellectual property of the project staff. These rules enhance co-publication counts and citations and distort the use of co-publication data as a proxy for collaboration. The distorting effects are illustrated by a case study of the BRICS countries that recently issued a declaration on scientific and technological cooperation with specific thematic areas allocated to each country. It is found that with a single exception the designated research areas of collaboration are different to individual country specializations. The disjuncture between such ‘collaboration’ manifests as collaboration in mega-science astronomy and high-energy physics projects especially those of the Planck 2013 telescope and at CERN, Geneva. This raises questions of import to science policy, for the BRICS in particular, and the measurement of scientific collaboration more generally.

Suggested Citation

  • Michael Kahn, 2018. "Co-authorship as a proxy for collaboration: a cautionary tale," Science and Public Policy, Oxford University Press, vol. 45(1), pages 117-123.
    • Handle: RePEc:oup:scippl:v:45:y:2018:i:1:p:117-123.
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    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1093/scipol/scx052
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    1. Tomaz Bartol & Gordana Budimir & Doris Dekleva-Smrekar & Miro Pusnik & Primoz Juznic, 2014. "Assessment of research fields in Scopus and Web of Science in the view of national research evaluation in Slovenia," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 98(2), pages 1491-1504, February.
    2. Jeremy P. Birnholtz, 2006. "What does it mean to be an author? The intersection of credit, contribution, and collaboration in science," Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 57(13), pages 1758-1770, November.
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    Cited by:

    1. Guillermo Armando Ronda-Pupo, 2023. "Mexico: a bridge in Cuba–U.S. scientific collaboration," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 128(4), pages 2301-2315, April.
    2. Giulio Marini, 2021. "Joining the European Union as an advantage in science performativity. A quasi-experimental study," DoQSS Working Papers 21-09, Quantitative Social Science - UCL Social Research Institute, University College London.
    3. Alexander Sokolov & Sergey Shashnov & Maxim Kotsemir, 2021. "From BRICS to BRICS plus: selecting promising areas of S&T Cooperation with developing countries," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 126(11), pages 8815-8859, November.

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