Principles of scientific research team formation and evolution

Area of Science:

• Sociology of Science
• Bibliometrics
• Scientometrics

Background:

• Scientific research is increasingly conducted by teams, yet a model for team size distribution is lacking.
• Recent decades show significant growth in research team sizes across many scientific fields.

Purpose of the Study:

• To develop a comprehensive model explaining the emergence and growth of scientific research team sizes.
• To understand the evolution of team size distributions over time.

Main Methods:

• Development of a mathematical model simulating team formation and growth.
• Analysis of empirical data on team size distributions over a 50-year period.
• Construction of an analytical functional form to quantify contributions of different team types.

Main Results:

• The model accurately reproduces the observed evolution of team size distributions.
• Two modes of knowledge production identified: small 'core' teams (Poisson distribution) and larger 'extended' teams (power-law tail).
• Extended teams accumulate members based on past productivity, leading to large team sizes (10-1,000 members).

Conclusions:

• The proposed model provides a fundamental understanding of scientific team size dynamics.
• The model's analytical form allows for direct data-driven determination of authorship contributions.
• This framework can be extended to study other social aspects of science, including productivity and collaboration.