Study questions value of large research teams

Scientific research teams can become counterproductive when they grow too large, according to a recent article published in the journal Science Advances. The article, titled “Multinational Teams and Diseconomies of Scale in Collaborative Research,” examined the citation rates of 24 million life and physical sciences research papers and checked these rates against the makeup of the teams that produced them. Their study found that a paper’s citation rate per capita decreased as the number of authors in a research team grew beyond roughly 20. However, the study also found that citation rates rose when more countries were represented within the research team. Inside Higher Ed | Full Report