The importance of collaborative networks in Canadian scientific research

This study investigates co-author and co-inventor collaborations using scientific articles and patents to measure collaborative knowledge production. This paper assesses how a scientist’s position within the joint co-publication and co-invention network affects its production and citation impact. Our findings reveal that number of publications is strongly associated with the scientists’ position in co-author/inventor networks and that a scientist’s technological production actually increases with collaboration in such networks. These academic relationships have a significant impact on the future number of publication citations and appear to benefit the number of patent citations in the same measure.

Uncontrolled Keywords

• academic patents
• collaboration
• nanotechnology
• scientific papers