Research metrics and publishing: Collaborations / Collaborators

Collaboration metrics can be used to highlight the degree to which a set of authors are integrated into scientific networks as evidenced by their co-authorships.

SciVal produces collaboration metrics by assigning publications as either institutional, national, international, or single-authorship based on the author and affiliation data. Where a publication fits multiple categories (e.g. national and international) it is assigned to a single category to maintain the total sum of publications.

Academic collaboration metrics may be used to evidence interdisciplinary research capacity and research partnerships at an institutional, national or international level. Academic-corporate collaboration metrics may evidence productive engagements with community groups, industry or governments.


Key ways to locate potential research collaborators include:

• Conduct a search on your research topic or specialty discipline. Then identify the authors that have written the most papers in that area, or who have published the most highly cited papers in that area.
• Conduct a search in a related discipline that has potential for cross disciplinary work in your own area. Find authors from your own institution that you could partner with, or see who they have co-authored with to find other potential researchers that they may be able to introduce you to.
• Find your researcher profile and identify authors who have cited your own work.
• If you are going to attend an event such as presenting at an international conference, then specifically search for relevant researchers from the hosting country or institution to make the most of networking opportunities created by the event.

Source/tools:  Web of Science, Scopus, SciVal, InCites.