Informal connections outweigh coauthorship ties in academic impact

Area of Science:

• Social Sciences
• Bibliometrics
• Scholarly Communication

Background:

• Formal collaboration, like coauthorship, is known to enhance research productivity and innovation.
• The role and impact of informal collaboration on scholarly success remain less understood.
• Informal ties facilitate intangible resource exchange, such as mentoring and feedback, crucial for research development.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate the relationship between informal collaboration and publication success in political science.
• To quantify the network structure and impact of informal scholarly ties.
• To compare the predictive power of informal versus formal collaboration on research outcomes.

Main Methods:

• Analysis of acknowledgment sections in political science articles (2003-2023).
• Measurement of scholars' embeddedness in informal collaboration networks.
• Application of coarsened exact matching and random forest regressions.

Main Results:

• Informal networks offer broader and denser support structures than coauthorship ties.
• Disconnection from informal networks correlates with reduced research productivity and impact.
• Informal collaboration is a stronger predictor of publication success than formal coauthorship, even when controlling for various factors.

Conclusions:

• Informal scholarly communication networks are vital for research success and citation impact.
• These informal support structures significantly influence academic productivity and recognition.
• Understanding and leveraging informal ties can help bridge gaps in research benefits and opportunities.