research collaboration among university scientists
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Higher Education Research & Development
ISSN: 0729-4360 (Print) 1469-8366 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/cher20
Research Collaboration Among UniversityScientists
Philip S. Morrison , Gill Dobbie & Fiona J. McDonald
To cite this article: Philip S. Morrison , Gill Dobbie & Fiona J. McDonald (2003) ResearchCollaboration Among University Scientists, Higher Education Research & Development, 22:3,275-296, DOI: 10.1080/0729436032000145149
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Higher Education Research & DevelopmentVol. 22, No. 3, November 2003
Research Collaboration Among UniversityScientistsPHILIP S. MORRISONVictoria University of Wellington, New Zealand
GILL DOBBIEUniversity of Auckland, New Zealand
FIONA J. MCDONALDUniversity of Otago, Dunedin, New Zealand
ABSTRACT Despite the growing importance of collaboration in research there have beenvery few investigations of the practice of research collaboration itself. The study we reportinvestigated this practice by analysing 444 collaborative projects undertaken by staff in theScience Faculty of a New Zealand university. While the results support the sociology ofscience model of vertical collaboration up and down the academic hierarchy, we also showthat significant collaboration now takes place across levels in the hierarchy, that is amongpeers, in what we call horizontal collaboration. This shift from vertical to horizontalcollaboration has not been readily apparent in bibliographic studies of co-authored papersin top journals. One of the questions this study raises is the often assumed positiveassociation between collaboration, research output and research quality, and the implica-tions such assumptions have on the institutionalisation of research within the university. Weend by suggesting that the shift that is occurring in the location of research from conven-tional departments to research centres within the university may signal an attempt toresurrect the practice of vertical collaboration.
Introduction
In the scientific and scholarly professions, a striking trend is the growthover the past several decades of collaborative work (Fox & Faver, 1982).
The trend towards co-authorship … is one of the most violent transitionsthat can be measured in recent trends in scientific manpower and literature(Price, 1963; cited in McDowell & Melvin, 1983, p. 155).
Working in the 1960s, Clark recognised the complexity of university research. Hewas struck in particular by the number of papers that were published not byindividuals but jointly, by pairs and small groups of academics who had collaborated
ISSN 0729-4360 print; ISSN 1469-8360 online/03/030275-22 2003 HERDSADOI: 10.1080/0729436032000145149
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on a particular project. He noted for example how only 23% of biomedical papersand 32% of chemistry papers in 1963 had single authors (Clark, 1964 as cited inBecher, 1989 p. 95). In the same decade, Zuckerman estimated that about 80% ofchemistry papers were multi-authored, as against some 60% in physics and 40% inthe biological sciences (Zuckerman, 1968).
These collaborative patterns of work were already emerging in the physical andbiological sciences at the beginning of the twentieth century, but similar levels ofcollaboration were not apparent in the social sciences until after the Second WorldWar (Zukerman & Merton, 1973, p. 547). In both broad fields, levels of collabora-tion have continued to rise markedly and have now become the most common wayacademics add to scientific knowledge (Hargens, 1975; Zuckerman & Merton,1973; de Solla Price, 1963; Clark, 1987). By contrast, there are few indications ofany such trend in the humanities where research remains largely the domain of theindividual scholar.
The upward trend in collaboration is apparent in both the social as well asphysical and biological sciences. In economics, in particular, the growth in co-authorship has been quite startling with a steady and substantial increase in multipleauthorship since 1980 (Hudson, 1996; McDowell & Melvin, 1983; Heck & Zaleski,1991). As Hudson concluded, “apparently the economist of the early postwar periodwas typically a solitary worker, while the economists of today are much moreinclined to hunt in packs of at least two” (1996, p. 154).
Two main schools of thought now influence our thinking on research collabora-tion: the vertical and the horizontal. Probably the most fully articulated model is thatwhich views collaboration as an integral consequence of the hierarchical nature ofscience in which collaboration is essentially vertical in the relationship it describes,for this is the mechanism by which the elite groom promising young scientists.According to this model, scientific collaboration becomes an essential step in movingup the science hierarchy (Beaver & Rosen, 1978a, 1979).
While earlier statistical analysis supported the greater likelihood of both older andmore senior academics engaging in collaborative activity (Zuckerman & Merton,1973), contemporary statistics on collaboration suggest that the practice has becomeconsiderably more widespread. Our analysis of the collaborative process (which isquite distinct from the study of collaborative outputs) suggests that collaboration isnow the dominant form of research among all scientists, not just the elite and theirproteges. Collaboration is just as likely to involve peers as superiors even among staffat an early stage in their careers. This suggests that there are now a number of otherforces at work fostering a pattern of horizontal collaboration which are perceived byscientists as having a number of advantages not appreciated in the vertical collabo-ration model.
Among these other forces are the growth of subject areas, specialisation and theassociated increase in the number of researchers (see Hudson, 1996; Durden &Gaynor, 1997a, 1997b). The motivation is the division of labour which, as knowl-edge expands, leads to ever increasing levels of specialisation. The further thefragmentation the greater the gains to be made from pooling specialist knowledge(McDowell & Melvin, 1983). According to this argument, collaboration leads to
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efficiency gains in the number of published papers (Landry, Traore & Godin, 1996;Lott, 1983). (For a detracting view see McDowell & Kinolm Smith, 1992.) Thepayoff in quality gains (e.g. higher citations per paper) has already been demon-strated (see Laband, 1987). Others have pointed to the increased pressure topublish, the increased costs of publishing as more journals charge entry fees,pressures from funding agencies, as well as financial pressure from within theuniversities themselves to increase revenue from non teaching sources (see Barnett,Ault & Kaserman, 1988).
Collaboration by academics appears rational on other grounds as well. Faced withincreasing pressure to get into the top journals, academics reduce their risk ofrejection by distributing their effort over more jointly authored articles, and techno-logical developments in communication have certainly made such collaborationeasier (Hudson, 1996). There is also an argument which may be particularlyimportant in explaining the growth of horizontal collaboration, namely that jointwork can be more fun than working alone. In other words, there are consumptionas well as production returns to collaboration (Hamermesh & Oster, 2002).
The expanding literature on research collaboration has not yet identified thisdifference between vertical and horizontal collaboration, largely because of thewidespread use of the bibliometric method. Such studies take as their unit of analysisthe completed (and successful) project as reflected by the papers published, usuallyin the leading journals. Students of the sociology of science have gained considerableinsight by examining the collaborative behaviour of the elite (Nobel Laureates inZuckerman’s 1977 case) and they have generalised accordingly (see Beaver &Rosen, 1978b and citations therein). By contrast, our study takes a differentapproach by drawing not on the elite per se, but from the research projects of a widecross-section of scientists. This way we have been able to observe a range ofacademics with different levels of collaboration actively working on a multiplicity ofprojects at different stages in the research “life cycle”.
If the vertical model of collaboration prevailed, then the inferences drawn aboutthe amount of collaboration from the successfully published research projects wouldshow little difference compared to that observed at the project development stage.Our survey of on-going collaborative projects shows that this is certainly not the caseand that other forces are at work generating much higher levels of collaboration thanthe vertical collaboration model would suggest.
Superficially, our results appear to support the empirical studies of co-authorship:collaboration is widespread, is highly valued by staff, varies by discipline, and inmany cases is hierarchical. But it is not (as the bibliographic studies have suggested)a pattern peculiar to the elite within a scientific field. Collaboration is now widelypractised by all members of staff, is more “democratic” and far more horizontal innature. We suggest that this widespread contemporary pattern of collaboration isnow being driven less and less by the imperatives of the reproduction of hierarchyand more and more by the economics of production within the academic industry.
Furthermore, we argue that while both vertical and horizontal collaborationcontinue to coexist, with the growth of horizontal collaboration the associationbetween collaboration and quality assumed in the sociological model of science isweakening. The professor-led university has now been largely replaced by the
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manager-led university and the dynamics of collaboration have shifted under thispower play. The challenge to the contemporary university is to harness the wide-spread wish for collaboration among peers in ways that exploit the benefits ofspecialisation, economies of scale and productivity, but at the same time reassert theintellectual leadership of professors. This is needed to re-establish the qualityassociated with vertical collaboration. The rapid growth of the research centre orcentres of excellence is evidence of such a structural transformation of the way weorganise the production of knowledge in the tertiary sector.
In the following sections we review the literature on research collaboration and thedominant model from the sociology of science. This is a model whereby researchcollaboration is viewed as a reflection of the professionalisation of science in whichhierarchy plays a key role. We then turn to an interpretation of collaboration interms of the economics of specialisation and publication. After an introduction tothe research design and questionnaire our results are presented using the researchproject as the central unit of analysis. We conclude by considering the implicationsof the spread of collaboration for the way in which university research is organised.
Literature Review
The primary model of research collaboration in the literature views collaboration asa logical response to the hierarchical structure of science, arguing that collaborationserves as a means of professional mobility (Beaver & Rosen, 1979). In other words,scientific co-authorship is most comprehensively viewed as a reaction to the processof professionalisation. Thus, “co-authorship [is] an acknowledgement of depen-dency, financial or intellectual, within a hierarchical social system of science”(Beaver & Rosen, 1979, p. 232). Support comes from Crane’s work which foundthat diffusion of the work of a co-author of low status occurs more rapidly whencoupled with the name of a higher status scientist (Crane 1969, cited in Beaver &Rosen, 1979, p. 234). Increased visibility leads in turn to informal collaboration andhence to increased access to information.
Puzzled by the rapid growth of collaborative research in their own profession,students of economics began undertaking their own enquiries using the conceptualtools from their own discipline. This work appears to have proceeded quite indepen-dently of the work on the sociology of science. The economists observed thatco-authorship in economics (and most other social science professions) changedfrom being a minority practice in the 1970s to being the dominant method ofproduction in the 1990s (Hamermesh & Oster, 2002, Table 1). Attention thenturned to the determinants of co-authorship and, by implication, the practice ofresearch collaboration itself.
In constructing their explanation, the economists reached back to Adam Smith’sargument on the way increased market size fosters the division of labour, and hencespecialisation, but results in greater inter-dependency among specialists. Over andabove the expanding market, the sheer growth of knowledge renders it a technicalnecessity to specialise (see McDowell & Melvin, 1983, p. 156). In short, as theknowledge base expands and the size of the profession increases so there is a greater
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opportunity for specialisation and therefore greater returns to co-authorship. As if toreinforce the point, McDowell and Kiholm Smith (1992) found in their study ofeconomists that due to gender sorting, women co-author less frequently than menbecause there are fewer female economists with whom to collaborate (Eisenhauer,1997, p. 192).
An additional strand in the economists’ argument has to do with the increasingemphasis now being placed on research output. The most readily available andrelatively objective method of assessing an employee’s performance, observe Barnettet al. (1988), is to utilise publication output as a criterion for promotion and salaryraises:
As academic institutions have faced mounting budgetary problems, theyhave turned to outside funding of research projects in order to bolstershrinking revenues. To attract such funding, an institution must alsoattract and retain faculty with reputations as productive researchers. Thus,academic salaries have been more closely tied to publication output(Barnett et al., 1988, p. 539–540).
The same argument is developed by Durden and Gaynor who note how, “thelinkages between scholarly production and promotion, tenure and maximization ofyearly salary increments have become stronger and are present at institutions of alllevels” (Durden & Gaynor, 1997b, p. 193).
The ramifications are instructive. As a result of the increasing emphasis now beingplaced on research output, the opportunity cost of time of the typical member of theprofession has increased. This in turn has affected the market for an important inputinto the production of publishable articles—pre-submission review by colleaguesworking in the field:
As the opportunity cost of time has risen, the supply price of potentialreviewers has increased. The equilibrium price of obtaining a conscientiousreview, then, has risen. Since monetary payment for reviews has not yetmaterialised, this increased price often takes the form of co-authorship(Barnett et al., 1988, p. 540).
This pressure to exact a price for advice is exacerbated from another source—thepressure on top quality journal space:
As the pressure to publish has intensified, competition for journal space(particularly in the leading journals) has become more keen. While thesupply of journal space has expanded as well, this expansion has failed tokeep pace with the increased demand. The result has been an overalltightening of the standards required for acceptance at major journals withestablished reputations (Barnett et al., 1988, p. 540).
Faced with increasing standards in the core journals, academics have tried tospread the risk involved in submission. The natural response on the part ofrisk-averse individuals is to diversify against the risk of rejection by collaborating.Through co-authorship, “one is able to increase the total number of papers submit-
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ted within a given period of time, thereby reducing the variance of the randomelement inherent in the review process” (1997b, p. 193). Thus, “even if the value ofco-authored papers is discounted exactly by the number of authors, and if there areno synergistic or quality effects in co-authoring, there will still be incentives tocollaborate” (1997b, p. 541, our emphasis). The distinctive feature of this argumentis that it is not dependent on a science hierarchy: the economics of the research andpublication industry alone stimulates collaboration. While the benefits of verticalcollaboration remain, there now coexists another set of incentives which stimulatecollaboration among peers—horizontal collaboration.
Two of the underlying motivations for the study of research collaboration are therelationship of the practice to research productivity and to research quality. Estab-lishing such relationships empirically has been anything but straightforward and wesuggest this is largely because the vertical and horizontal pressures to collaboratetend to be confounded in research designs. Durden and Perri (1995) found strongevidence that co-authorship increases productivity but at a decreasing rate. Lott(1983) found that co-authorship is associated with increased quality as judged byacceptance rates in journals, and Laband (1987) found strong evidence of higherquality as measured by citations (Eisenhauer, 1997, p. 191). McDowell and KiholmSmith (1992) found no significant effect of co-authorship on productivity.
The results obtained by Landry et al. (1996), Traore and Landry (1997) andLandry and Amara (1998) are ambiguous by their own admission. They suggest thatto the extent that transaction costs rise, as they do when operational considerationsassociated with collaboration are dominant, then productivity might fall. In otherwords, “There is a trade off between the capture of benefits measured in terms ofadditional publications and research funds and the coordinating costs of collabora-tive research” (Landry & Amara, 1998, p. 901). Making a similar point, Hudson(1996) suggests that while the division of labour may provide for greater efficiencyin research, it may also lead to diseconomies of scale. He also adds the interestingpoint that collaboration may encourage compromise among the writing parties andlead to less risk taking and therefore reduce the number of daring or radical ideasbeing offered. In short, as Fox and Faver wrote much earlier (1982), collaborationcan be a minefield for the unwary, with unequal effects, uncompleted outcomes withpotential disputes over work habits, levels of commitment to the “project” anddisputes over intellectual property and funding allocation.
Not only are the ambiguous effects of collaboration likely to be due to thepresence of both vertical and horizontal collaborations but they also raise questionsabout the appropriate unit of analysis itself. As Zuckerman and Merton noted sometime ago, multiple authorship is an imperfect indication of the actual organisation ofresearch. The sustained growth in the proportion of scientific articles published bytwo or more authors is a pale reflection of the shift in the social organisation ofscientific enquiry we call collaboration (Zuckerman & Merton, 1973, p. 546).Increasingly these shortcomings are being recognised and other measures of collab-oration are being developed. For example, Landry et al., obtained a sample of 1,566professors across Quebec in an attempt to gauge degrees and types of collaborativebehaviour both within and outside the university. They then sought to quantify the
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impact of collaboration on publication output (also see Traore & Landry, 1997).Zuckerman’s approach differed again for he compared collaborative behaviour oflaureates against a comparison sample of others both cross-sectionally and bygeneration (see Zuckerman, 1977). While in yet another study Pfeffer and Langton(1993) accessed 17,000 responses from 80% of faculty members in more than 600departments of 20 or more staff in the US in 1969 in order to study the effect ofwage dispersion on collaboration.
Interestingly, the available evidence using “other forms” of research output doesnot support the growth of collaboration. Gordon’s analysis of multiple authorship ofpapers submitted to a leading astronomy journal for example, lead him to question“the range of facets of the conduct of science for which trends in co-authorshipstatistics constitute a valid operationalisation” (Gordon, 1980, p. 194). Gordonexamined the assumption that “the relative frequency of production of researchjournal papers with different levels of multiple authorship is proportional to (if notequivalent to) the relative frequency of appearance of papers by groups of each sizein research journals” (Gordon, 1980, p. 194). Unlike other studies of multi-authorships however, Gordon also studied rejection rates and found that singleauthored papers were far more likely to be rejected. As a consequence, he concludedthat “unless it is the case that a sufficiently large proportion of rejected paperseventually find acceptance in other reputable journals, the relationship of propor-tionality between papers produced and papers published cannot be said to be thesame for both single author papers and those with multiples of authorship of varioussizes” (Gordon, 1980, p. 199).
Beaver and Rosen’s comparisons of levels of collaboration in prestigious journalsled them to draw similar conclusions. They found that most prestigious journals ina scientific area contain a disproportionate number of collaborative papers (Beaver& Rosen, 1979). This led them to conclude that, “the statistics of collaborativeresearch are very sensitive to the journals selected for data collection [and the] closerone gets to the central core, the greater the frequency of teamwork” (1979, p. 236).Reports of the prevalence of co-authorship are exaggerated therefore and “derivefrom an erroneous statistical methodology untutored by sociological or historicalacuity” (1979, p. 231).
Examining rejection rates certainly exposes author composition bias inherent inaccepted papers (particularly those in elite journals). One needs, as Gordon remindsus, “to exercise more extensive qualification when drawing inferences about actualsocial aspects of research activity, from trends in multiple authorship of publishedpapers” (Gordon, 1980, p. 193; our emphasis). “In science, as in other socialsystems, the elite (which is over represented in core journals) is not thenorm … collaboration is not yet as typical for the general scientific community ….asit is for the elite” (Beaver & Rosen, 1979, p. 237).
Although we certainly agree with the bias exposed by Gordon, Beaver and Rosen,we have reason to question their conclusion that collaboration is not yet as typicalfor the general scientific community. While neither may be willing to make the sameclaim 20 years after their published observations, we would argue that there are othergrounds for our questioning. Specifically, we suggest that these authors do not go
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back far enough in the research process itself to access that much larger body ofresearch activity from which the relatively small set that is successfully published aredrawn. Collaboration in every day science activity remains largely unexposed by theconventional examination of multiple authorships. For this reason, we have taken astep back in the research process itself and assembled a large set of research projectsworked on over the period of a year by a typical cross-section of scientists. We beginby putting the survey in the context of the restructuring of tertiary education.
The Context and the Questionnaire
New Zealand, with a population of 3.8 million in 1999, employed a total academicstaff of 6,171 (4,452 fulltime) spread over eight universities: University of Auckland,Auckland University of Technology, the University of Waikato, Massey University,Victoria University of Wellington, the University of Canterbury, Lincoln Universityand the University of Otago (Statistics New Zealand, 2000, p. 226–7). Universitiesin New Zealand are controlled by their own councils, established under legislationdrafted to maximise their autonomy, consistent with the normal requirements ofaccountability for public funding. Each university sets its own programs, and allmatters relating to management are the responsibility of the council of the insti-tution, which represents the interests of staff, students and community. The councilis also responsible for approving course regulations and for maintaining the equiva-lences of courses for degrees and other qualifications (Statistics New Zealand, 2000,p. 226).
The pressure on New Zealand universities to maximise their return on researchreached new heights with the release in 1999 of the New Zealand Government’swhite paper on higher education. This paper emphasised the potential role collabo-ration should play in raising research performance both within the university andbetween the university and industry. Cooperative research was further stressed bythe Foundation for Research, Science and Technology, the primary funding bodyfor research in New Zealand, when it called for submissions by research teams. Theimportance of collaboration was again stressed in Victoria University’s own call forStrategic Development Funds which emphasised interdisciplinary and inter-facultycollaborations, or collaborations with partners outside the University.
It is in this context of restructuring of the tertiary sector in general, and ofuniversity research in particular, that the following survey on collaboration wasdesigned. The aim was to document the actual patterns of research collaborationwithin the Science Faculty of Victoria University of Wellington over the period June1998–June 1999. At Victoria University of Wellington, the term “science” has to beinterpreted broadly. Only 13% of academic staff are in the “core” science group ofphysics and chemistry, and the Faculty includes disciplines such as architecture andpsychology which may not appear in the science faculties of other universities.
The analysis was based on responses to a confidential questionnaire administeredto 144 academic staff across the six Schools that make up the Faculty of Science:Architecture, Biological Sciences, Chemistry and Physics, Earth Sciences, Math-ematical and Computing Sciences, and Psychology. With eleven staff on leave at the
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time, the survey covered a net population of 133 fulltime academics. Only 12 staffdid not submit completed returns, which still yielded a net response rate of 91% andensured representative coverage of the Faculty. Even though our response rate washigh by conventional standards we should still be aware of possible bias. Absentstaff—those on leave as well as those not responding—were not a representativesample of the staff as a whole. In the sample there is a slight under representationof Senior Lecturers and of staff from School of Mathematical and ComputingSciences and the School of Psychology in particular.
The survey was designed to provide information on two quite different units ofanalysis: the staff and the research projects they were engaged in. The questionnairesought information on selected characteristics of staff, their disciplines and sub-disciplines, period of service and position, the research projects they were engagedin as well as the number of projects involving collaboration and the type ofcollaboration. We also asked each staff member to state the perceived value ofcollaboration for their own research and to share their thoughts on possible impedi-ments to further collaboration.
The second unit of analysis was the research project. A project was identified assuch if it involved its own separate set of research question(s) and was designed tolead to its own stand-alone product such as a published paper. Staff were asked tolist the number of projects they worked on over the year to June 1999, to give a titleto each research project, state the number of collaborators, the discipline andsub-discipline of the collaborators and their institutional context and location. Theywere also asked to identify the type of collaboration cross-tabulated by its degree ofcompletion at the time of the survey (completed, in-process, potential). The pre-constructed list of types of collaboration included the following:
1. jointly published a book;2. jointly published one or more papers or book chapters;3. jointly edited a book or special issue of a journal (include those accepted and in
press for publication in 1999);4. jointly prepared presentation for a conference or symposium;5. jointly supervised one or more Masters students;6. jointly supervised one or more PhD students;7. jointly prepared and submitted a grant application;8. jointly received a research project grant under NZ$10,0009. jointly received a research project grant NZ $10,000 and over;
10. other (elaborate).
The inclusion of joint supervision may be read ostensibly as teaching however thewidespread (and encouraged) practice of publishing with graduate students inscience renders this an important step or stage in the research collaboration ofsupervisors themselves.
For most writers using the bibliometric method, collaboration is simply defined asjoint authorship, even though as many authors know, the nature and degree ofcollaboration can vary substantially. In terms of measurement, collaboration issimply a nominal variable; it either occurs or it does not. The further back we go into
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the research process itself the weaker the connection between collaboration andpublication. Joint applications for funding may or may not result in shared author-ship. Collaborators may develop a common data set together but then undertakeseparate analyses which are published independently. As one of our Australianreferees pointed out, as pressure to apply cooperatively for grants increases, unsuc-cessful applications may lead to collaborations disbanding before the project isrealised. When one samples from any point in the research process as we do below,the collaboration has to be defined independently of eventual authorship.
From a data set on research projects we were able to address several questions.The first question concerned the extent of research collaboration in practice—asopposed to simply its realisation in published form as co-authorship. The secondwas the nature of that collaboration itself: whom it was with; what it was for; andwhere did it take place? Thirdly, we asked for the results of the collaboration and themeasurable outputs.
Results
Research by academics involves the allocation of variable research time across anumber of different research endeavours of different size, complexity and stages ofcompletion. Figure 1 shows the number of academics in the Victoria UniversityScience Faculty by the number of research projects they were engaged in at anypoint over the 12 months to mid 1999. All but four of the 133 staff were involvedin one or more such projects.
There are two noteworthy features of Figure 1. Firstly, the average number ofresearch projects, 5.2, was quite high considering the level of teaching and adminis-tration required of academic staff. Secondly, research practice is typically a matterof simultaneous engagement in a variety of enquires at different stages of completion.
The degree of collaboration was established over each of these activities for eachcollaborative project. By focusing on the research project we wanted to establish thedegree to which staff actually worked together on a range of tasks, not simply thosedirectly focussed on the final research product. Our results show that during the 12months to June 1999 over 85% of Science Faculty academic staff were involved inone or more collaborative projects. Typically, an academic will work alone on someprojects and collaboratively with other academics on others. Research collaborationdefined in this way tended to be lowest in Architecture (45.5% of all researchprojects involved some collaboration), Psychology (53%) and in Biological Sciences(65.3%) and highest in Earth Sciences [Geography, Geology and Geophysics],(68.8%). Therefore, far from being the province of elite researchers, collaborationwould appear to be the dominant mode of research practice for virtually all scienceacademics. The issue is no longer whether collaboration is common or evendominant but how the practice is operating, among whom and to what effect.
As if to underscore the importance of separating projects from outputs publishedin journals we noticed that well under half of the 444 collaborative research projectsoperating in 1999 could report measurable outputs in that year. Only 37.3% of allprojects were associated with at least one published paper, and of these over three
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FIG. 1. The number of science academics by the number of all research projects in progress, June1999.
quarters had only produced one. Relatively more research projects (42.5%) involved“papers in progress”, but even here less than 10% involved more than two papers.If we add the potential output of the collaborative research, then over 90% of allcollaborative projects had already lead to a published paper, potential paper, bookor paper for a conference. Other measures of “output” we used included jointapplications for grants which involved 46% of all projects.
One of the most consistent observations about research collaboration is that it ishighly intra-disciplinary and varies considerably by discipline. Our survey offered aunique opportunity to re-examine this generalisation in a controlled, single facilitysetting. Of particular interest to us was the degree to which collaborative researchinvolved not only working within or across disciplines, but within and betweenSchools and other Faculties in the University as well as with other institutions insideand outside New Zealand.
A total of 15 primary research disciplines were identified within the Faculty. Themost heavily represented was Biology with almost 19% of the academic staff; thenext largest was Architecture with nearly 11%, followed by Psychology, Geography,Physics and Maths with about 10% each. The Interconnectivity Matrix in Table 1identifies the extent to which collaboration was taking place within and acrossdisciplines. The main discipline identified by the academic is given in the row, andthe discipline of their main collaborator in the column. Each cell in the matrix showsthe number of research projects generated by each collaboration.
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As the entries in the main diagonal show, most (nearly three quarters) of allcollaborative research projects involved researchers in the same discipline. Eventhough a large majority of collaborations only involve one other staff member, byconfining this table to the main collaborator only we could be under-estimating thelikely level of interdisciplinary collaboration.
Our more detailed analysis shows that the vast majority of intra-disciplinarycollaboration is actually undertaken by members of the same subdiscipline. Table 1shows that this intra-disciplinary (and intra-subdisciplinary) collaboration is particu-larly high in the Physical, Mathematical, and Life Sciences. The distribution ofentries in Table 1 also shows the paucity of interdisciplinary research—collaborativework across disciplines. Where it does occur, interdisciplinary research appears toinvolve (almost exclusively) staff whose disciplines are already represented withinthe Science Faculty. Projects in which the main collaborator was housed outside theFaculty occurred in only 6% of all the collaborative projects.
Collaboration and Hierarchy
The relationship between collaboration and seniority is central to that school ofthought which sees “co-authorship as an acknowledgement of dependency, financialor intellectual, within a hierarchical social system of science” (Beaver & Rosen,1979, p. 232). Scientists without access to the elite seldom make it on their own,especially when greater resources are necessary for research (Beaver & Rosen, 1979,p. 240). Zuckerman and Merton explicitly addressed the role played by age andseniority in co-authorship, noting that collaboration was most likely in the middleyears and that the processes involved could be reconstructed in terms of age-patterned opportunities and age-patterned motivations for collaboration (Zucker-man & Merton, 1973).
Our survey revealed that two thirds of respondents were lecturing staff (32Lecturers and 63 Senior Lecturers) and a third were Professors (21 full Professorsand 28 Associate Professors). Over 80% of the academic staff were male, withfemale staff disproportionately concentrated in lecturing positions as they are inmost universities. The vast majority of the Science Faculty staff hold PhDs withalmost two thirds having graduated from overseas universities. At the time of thesurvey, a quarter of the surveyed staff had held their appointment at VictoriaUniversity of Wellington for 25 years or more, and half for over 13 years. Only aquarter had been appointed in the five years prior to the survey. As expected, thereis a close association between the time spent at the University and present positionwith Professors having been employed for a median of 21.5 years, AssociateProfessors—25.5 years, Senior Lecturers—13 years and Lecturers—4 years.
In a result quite consistent with the general thrust of the vertical collaborationthesis, we too find that the likelihood of collaboration increases with seniority. Themedian proportion of projects involving collaboration rises from just over 50% in thecase of Lecturers, through to two thirds for Senior Lecturers and Associate Profes-sors, to three quarters in the case of full Professors (see Table 2 below). This is animportant result, because from it we infer the presence of both vertical and horizon-
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tal collaboration. Even though the number of research projects does not alter withseniority, the likelihood of collaboration definitely does, with professorial staffdrawing on their accumulated experience, contacts and funding to attract morecollaborators. This particular tendency is not affected by the fact that the propensityto collaborate varies by discipline and hence by School.
The Perceived Importance of Collaborative Research
Although previous research has established the quantitative importance of collabora-tion none appears to have sought subjective evaluation of collaboration per se. Beforesurveyed staff at Victoria University had detailed their research projects and extentof collaboration they were asked to rate the importance they attached to collabora-tion “for their own research”. Their rating was registered on a five point scale inwhich 1 � “not important”, 3 � “important” and 5 � “extremely important”. Theywere asked this question of two types of collaboration, intra-disciplinary and inter-disciplinary.
The results are striking even considering that staff were well aware that thepurpose of the survey was to document research collaboration. Collaboration with amember of the same discipline was regarded as being important by 70% of theacademic staff (the proportion checking 3 or above on the five point scale), a resultconsistent with the empirical evidence showing the extent of intra-disciplinarycollaboration in practice. Where the preferences did not accord with current practicewas in terms of collaboration outside their primary discipline. Although inter-disciplinary collaboration was regarded as important by over half the staff (56%),only 6% of all projects were inter-disciplinary (recall Table 1).
While almost all staff in the Science Faculty were engaged in some collaborativeresearch most expressed a frustration at not being able to do more collaborativework. Indeed almost 90% of staff believed their own research would benefit fromadditional opportunities for collaboration. For Lecturers, this wish for more collab-oration was almost universal. Given these results, it comes as no surprise to find thatthe more junior the staff member the greater the perceived benefit of additionalcollaboration (see Table 2). More detail on the topic of productivity and seniority inacademia is given in Long (1978) and Long and Fox (1995) as well as in Levin andStephen (1991).
Anticipating this result from our pilot survey, we sought the reasons why so manyjunior staff felt unable to realise their desired level of collaboration. The primaryconstraint was time: too much teaching and administration crowd out the qualitytime necessary for research. We do not discount the possibility that the rising degreeof collaboration might also be a reflection of this pressure. The second majorresponse concerned lack of finance, particularly to attend the overseas conferencesand workshops many deemed necessary for collaborative work. This is a particularlyacute problem for New Zealand academics, not only because of the high cost of longdistance travel, but because the relatively low salaries and poor exchange rate makeany more than intermittent international contact prohibitively expensive, and oftenimpossible for new staff.
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TABLE 2. The degree of and wish for additional opportunities for research collaborationby academic rank
Benefit fromMedian proportion of additional
research projects involving opportunity forcollaboration collaboration*
Rank (%) (%) Difference
Professor 75 65 10Associate Professor 67 60 7Senior Lecturer 67 79 � 12Lecturer 58 92 � 34
Note: * The figures are the proportion of positive responses to the question: “Would yourown research benefit from additional opportunities for collaboration”.Source: Survey of faculty of Science academic staff, Victoria University of Wellington, NewZealand, June, 1999
The other major issue raised by lecturing staff was isolation. The benefits of beingin a large university are quite clear from previous collaboration studies. Relativelysmall universities (e.g. under 20,000 students) have too few staff in any one field toensure a sufficient choice of sympathetic collaborators. An associated concern,particularly of Lecturers, was the lack of developed networks and of any formalisedassistance in establishing and maintaining research. Running through the many openresponses to this question was a theme of considerable disappointment in beingunable to realise the kind of cooperative, enjoyable research environment whichmany of their more senior colleagues appeared to enjoy.
The vertical collaboration model depends for its applicability on a well-developedscientific hierarchy. An important ingredient is both the stratification of universitiesinto research and teaching establishments and the ability of professional staff withinteaching universities to devote their time to research and be in a position to mentoryounger staff and the best students. To the extent that budget pressures, both forfunding and teaching inhibit this division of labour, younger staff will seek collabo-ration among their peers.
Of central importance to this debate is the changing role of the Professors incontemporary universities. While research collaboration is both highly valued andwidely practised by staff, the majority of staff, younger recently appointed staff inparticular, expressed concern over a lack of leadership in fostering collaborativework. The diminished role of Professors under the contemporary university manage-ment system is seen as a major setback to the mentoring necessary to foster suchresearch, not only across institutions but within the disciplines where most of thecollaboration already takes place (see Long & McGinnis, 1985; Johnston & McCor-mack, 1997). In the absence of support for the hierarchy on which vertical collabo-ration is based, alternative forms of horizontal collaboration have emerged.
When the staff themselves were asked to identify steps the Faculty and Universitycould take to address their concerns over limited collaboration, staff indicated a wish
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for more information on how to network, how to interest collaborators bothdomestic and overseas, and how to obtain funding for collaborative work. There wasa particular plea to the University to free up more staff time for research to allowcontacts to be established and built on, and to offer much greater financial assistanceto allow collaborators to meet. They also wanted the University to formally recog-nise the value of collaboration in documented forums such as the promotion round,and to positively support inter-faculty as well as intra-disciplinary research byremoving some of the barriers to inter-faculty cooperation generated by financialdevolution.
The Role of Proximity in Collaborative Research
Physical proximity in the dissemination of ideas continues to play an important roleat both the institutional and regional level. The way universities configure theresearch environment both organisationally and spatially may have an importantimpact on research productivity. Studies of international research collaboration havedemonstrated how incentives to collaborate increase with geographic and/or culturalproximity (Luukkonen, Persson & Sivertsen, 1992). Additional insight into inter-national research collaboration is given by Narin, Stevens and Whitlaw (1991). Suchstudies have also shown that closeness reduces costs related to communication andinformation, and thus increases the effectiveness of collaboration (Landry et al.,1996, p. 293).
Given this pattern, Hamermesh and Oster (2002) asked how high technologymight alter patterns of co-authoring of major articles in economics particularlyamong authors located in different places. Interestingly, although they found dis-tance co-authorships were growing, they also found that this collaboration at adistance did not yield the same quality (as measured in terms of subsequentcitations). They concluded that, “the estimates … are striking evidence that distantco-authorship by otherwise identical co-authors, publishing articles of the samelength and type in the same journals is less productive than co-authorship by nearneighbours …” (Hamermesh & Oster, 2002, p. 547). And, this is after controllingfor the fact that it is the higher earning researchers who can afford to maintain andfoster distant relationships.
Our own results in Table 3 show that almost half (46%) of all the collaborationtook place among staff from within the same School as the respondent, and thatintra-university collaboration accounts for almost half of all collaborations (47.5%).Relatively few collaborations were taking place with other New Zealand universities,amounting to only 6.7% of research projects. More important for New Zealandacademics are the collaborations with overseas universities in which the maincollaborator is located overseas. This was the case in over a quarter of all suchcollaborative projects. In short, within-discipline and within-School collaborationsdominate. Collaborative links with other research groups in New Zealand arerelatively weak and those overseas only added a further 13.5%. A miscellaneousgroup of others contribute a further 6.8%.
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TABLE 3. The location of the main collaborator by number of collaborative researchprojects
Location Frequency % Cumulative %
Within the School 198 45.9 45.9Other schools within VUW 7 1.6 47.5In another New Zealand university 29 6.7 54.2In an overseas university 110 25.5 79.7In a non-university research 49 11.4 91.1
organisation, New ZealandIn a research organisation overseas 9 2.1 93.2Other 29 6.7 100.0
Total 431 100
Source: Survey of faculty of Science academic staff, Victoria University of Wellington,New Zealand, June, 1999
In summary, we find, along with previous researchers, that collaboration is stillheavily influenced not only by intellectual proximity but also by physical proximity.Most collaboration among scientists at Victoria University of Wellington is in-house,and within the same physical disciplinary unit. At the same time, the small size ofNew Zealand, the orientation of its universities to undergraduate teaching and thehigh proportion of staff having obtained PhDs overseas, collectively increases thelikelihood of collaboration off-shore. By comparison, collaboration with academicsin other New Zealand universities is extremely low, a pattern which has beenexacerbated by a government policy in the years leading up to the survey whichexplicitly encouraged the eight universities in New Zealand to compete against eachother for research funding (and students) rather than pooling resources and co-operating. It is possible that rather than sharing ideas with colleagues in otheruniversities around the country, New Zealand academics have been driven to closerconnection to overseas collaborators, to international publishing outlets and, wherecontacts allow, more generous funding opportunities.
Implications
The growth of research collaboration and its expanding literature convey mixedmessages to those responsible for managing research. There are two broad implica-tions. One concerns future research on collaboration and the second concerns theway benefits may be harnessed in institutional form. We look at each in turn.
Statistics from elite journals, which largely depict vertical collaboration, probablyover-emphasise the connection between collaboration and research quality. Al-though documentation of elite journal practice certainly overstates the possiblebenefits of the practice, our results suggest that academic staff at all levels in thehierarchy see positive returns, even though in many cases opportunities are withpeers rather than professors. Our suspicion, and this still needs rigorous testing, isthat while the democratisation of collaboration may lead to higher submission rates
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and possibly higher output counts per academic, horizontal collaboration alone maynot generate additional quality. Furthermore, as our analysis of the research processsuggests, collaboration may not necessarily result in journal publications.
Future research into collaboration would benefit from a focus on those forms ofcollaboration—vertical and horizontal—which actually do realise high quality,countable output. It is essential that such studies be carefully controlled for theattributes of those involved and the circumstances under which they are working.With a few exceptions (e.g. Pfeffer & Langton, 1993) studies of the impacts ofcollaboration tend not to control for the quality of authors and institutions. The factthat higher quality authors collaborate underscores the importance of controls inresearch design.
For the same reason, there is a strong case for considering the effect of collabora-tion on productivity. Collaboration could be presented as an argument in explainingresearch productivity (e.g. Babu & Singh, 1998). There are plenty of applications ofresearch productivity models: by country level (e.g. Teodorescu, 2000); amongindividuals (Fox & Milbourne, 1999); by gender (e.g. Xie & Shanman, 1999); byrace and faculty (e.g. Bellas & Toutkoushian, 1999); by attitude; by stress level; bylevel of teaching commitment; and by university (e.g. Ramsden, 1999). At the sametime, the sociological model of science reminds us that collaboration and institu-tional type are so intimately bundled together that it is the interaction between thesefactors rather than the marginal importance of any one that may be of mostsignificance. McDowell and Kiholm Smith, for example, point to the importance ofacademic environments in affecting the style and content of academic research andthe way it might influence the extent and nature of collaborative activity (McDowelland Kiholm Smith, 1992, p. 74).
The second implication is closely related to the first for it concerns the institu-tional form most appropriate to realise the benefits of collaboration. We have alreadysuggested that without the academic leadership inherent in the professorial systemmany non-vertical forms of collaboration may not result in published output or,when they do, result in work of insufficient quality to be accepted in elite journals.It is in this context that the research institute or centre becomes attractive; based onthe assumption that “the most efficient way of organising university research is tostructure interactions between researchers into formalised institutional arrangementssuch as teams and institutes” (Landry & Amara, 1998). Headed by an eminentprofessor with the funded time to allocate to research and to the associatedmentoring, these independent centres have an opportunity to foster and redevelopthe vertical collaboration that has been lost to many academic teaching departments,largely as a result of the disestablishment of disciplinary based professorships.
Conclusion
We began with the observation that studies of research collaboration were confinedmainly to the study of co-authored publications and that there had been very fewinvestigations of the actual practice of research collaboration itself. We then went onto argue that simply counting outputs, especially in elite journals, could only address
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a relatively select subset of collaborative endeavours. By basing our analysis on thecollaborative research project, rather than just the research output, we have generateda different perspective on the pattern of collaborative research.
Our review of the literature on research collaboration uncovered two prevailingmodels. The first was that based on the sociology of science, which argued thatcollaboration both reflected and aimed at reproducing the hierarchical organisationof science itself. The second, more recent argument derived from behaviour inducedby current publication imperatives within science. Based largely on analysis byeconomists of their own profession, the argument is that, given the heightenedpressures on staff to publish, collaboration among an increasingly specialised pro-fession better exploits the productivity gains implicit in the division of labour.
What we have argued, on the basis of the New Zealand evidence, is that there arein fact two processes involved: vertical collaboration of junior staff with professors,as implied in the sociologist’s hierarchical model; and horizontal collaboration,mainly with peers, driven by the economics of contemporary publication practice.The importance of this distinction, we believe, lies in the divide it may have openedup between collaboration and research quality—an hypothesis which now requiresrigorous testing. Professional mentoring, which is an integral feature of verticalcollaboration, is a highly selective process whereby the best academics pick andchoose their collaborators. Collaborative research carried out in this way generatescomparative advantages for both the junior and senior scholar that we find reflectedin the elite journals. By contrast, horizontal collaboration may be viewed largely asa response to the imperatives of production. Increasingly divorced from the verticalrelationships (partly as a result of the diminished role of professors in the university),sub-professorial staff seek collaborators from their peers—partly for their comple-mentary specialist knowledge, partly because collaboration helps spread the risk infunding and publication submissions, and partly because collaboration is actually amore enjoyable way of doing research.
It is possible that this more recent form of collaboration may be less tightly linkedto the quality control inherent in the hierarchical relationships that govern verticalcollaboration. This hypothesis only comes to light by shifting attention away fromthe final output, the published journal article, to the “shop floor”, the researchproject itself. Our study of 444 on-going collaborative research projects highlightedthe fact that many research efforts (collaborative or not) may not necessarily reachthe stage of publication in professional journals, let alone elite journals. This is sowithout considering different publication practices across disciplines. Many researchefforts end up as reports, working papers or simply as conference papers largelyunreviewed by their peers. And, to be honest, some will never see the light of day.
The lack of distinction between vertical and horizontal forms of collaborationhelps explain in part why the literature is so ambiguous over the relative merits ofcollaboration from a quality perspective. It also forms a basis for querying theimplicit assumption that research collaboration is a positive development and oughtto be encouraged per se. These potential differences in the quality of output betweenvertical and horizontal collaboration may already be reflected in the fact thatuniversities and external funders are shifting their research funding and organisa-
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tional efforts away from traditional academic departments towards specialist re-search centres or institutes. This allows the vertical research relationships betweensenior and junior staff to be re-established, but without resurrecting any of thegoverning power professors had in the university under the old departmental system.
The potential difficulty with a university model in which research centres operatein parallel, rather than as a part of traditional teaching departments, is not only thepossibility that research may become divorced from teaching, but that two differenttypes of collaboration—vertical and horizontal—become separated or even polarisedwithin the same institution. Without further research, such a concern will remainspeculative. What is clear, however, is that to associate research collaboration withincreased productivity and enhanced quality, without distinguishing between verticaland horizontal collaboration may send misleading signals to both university admin-istrators and to the students of the sociology and economics of science.
Acknowledgments
We would like to thank all the staff of the Science Faculty who took time out tocomplete what was, in the case of those with many research projects, quite a longquestionnaire. The many spontaneous comments received on the returned docu-ments provided further valuable information. In addition, the Dean (Professor PeterEnglert) and members of the Strategy Working Group commented on several draftsof the questionnaire, participated in the pilot questionnaire and responded construc-tively to the five oral reports delivered in May and June 1999. The analysis teamwould also like to thank Shellie Wilson for the careful job she did entering theresponses into the data base. Dr Joanna Kidman, Senior Lecturer, School ofEducation, Victoria University provided comments on an earlier draft and encour-aged us to disseminate our findings to an international audience. Helpful commentson the penultimate draft were also received from colleagues in the Institute ofGeography: Sara Kindon, Sean Weaver and Laurie Jackson. The comments of twoanonymous referees were appreciated.
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