The effect of multidisciplinary collaborations on research diversification

This work verifies whether research diversification by a scientist is in some measure related to their collaboration with multidisciplinary teams. The analysis considers the publications achieved by 5300 Italian academics in the sciences over the period 2004-2008. The findings show that a scientist's outputs resulting from research diversification are more often than not the result of collaborations with multidisciplinary teams. The effect becomes more pronounced with larger and particularly with more diversified teams. This phenomenon is observed both at the overall level and for the disciplinary macro-areas

Authorship analysis of specialized vs diversified research output

The present work investigates the relations between amplitude and type of collaboration (intramural, extramural domestic or international) and output of specialized versus diversified research. By specialized or diversified research, we mean within or beyond the author's dominant research topic. The field of observation is the scientific production over five years from about 23,500 academics. The analyses are conducted at the aggregate and disciplinary level. The results lead to the conclusion that in general, the output of diversified research is no more frequently the fruit of collaboration than is specialized research. At the level of the particular collaboration types, international collaborations weakly underlie the specialized kind of research output; on the contrary, extramural domestic and intramural collaborations are weakly associated with diversified research. While the weakness of association remains, exceptions are observed at the level of the individual disciplines

Gender differences in research diversification behavior

This work investigates whether and in what measure there occur gender differences in research diversification behavior by scientists. We analyze the nature of research diversification along three dimensions: extent of diversification, intensity of diversification, and degree of relatedness of topics in which researchers diversify. For this purpose we propose three bibliometric indicators, based on the disciplinary placement of scientific output of individual scientists. By classifying scientists by gender and field of research, we are able to assess gender differences along the above three dimensions in each field