The scaling relationship between citation‐based performance and coauthorship patterns in natural sciences

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Abstract
The aim of this paper is to extend our knowledge about the power‐law relationship between citation‐based performance and coauthorship patterns in papers in the natural sciences. We analyzed 829,924 articles that received 16,490,346 citations. The number of articles published through coauthorship accounts for 89%. The citation‐based performance and coauthorship patterns exhibit a power‐law correlation with a scaling exponent of 1.20 ± 0.07. Citations to a subfield's research articles tended to increase 2.1.20 or 2.30 times each time it doubled the number of coauthored papers. The scaling exponent for the power‐law relationship for single‐authored papers was 0.85 ± 0.11. The citations to a subfield's single‐authored research articles increased 2.0.85 or 1.89 times each time the research area doubled the number of single‐authored papers. The Matthew Effect is stronger for coauthored papers than for single‐authored. In fact, with a scaling exponent <1.0 the impact of single‐authored papers exhibits a cumulative disadvantage or inverse Matthew Effect.

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