"Evans told Physics World that he thinks smaller teams have more to gain and less to lose from disruption as they cannot compete with larger teams when it comes to building on previous work. This pushes them to explore possibilities that “don’t gel with but could disrupt” current scientific and technological trends. Evans says that clashes in large teams also reduce the number of ideas and steer members towards things they have in common."
Do citations by the (many) authors get counted in these citation counts?gleem said:Big groups are more impactful having more citations than papers with fewer authors, building on current research and concentrating on near term goals.
From the paper, published this week in Nature:BillTre said:Do citations by the (many) authors get counted in these citation counts?
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-019-0941-9We further test the robustness of our results against several different definitions of the disruption measure, including the removal of self-citation links, exclusion of all but high-impact references and other variations (Extended Data Fig. 5g–i). Across all variations, our conclusions remain the same.
Having fewer authors means that the paper was written by a smaller group of people, typically one or a few individuals.
Studies have shown that papers with fewer authors tend to be more disruptive, meaning they challenge existing ideas and lead to significant changes in the field.
One reason for this could be that papers with fewer authors have a more focused and unique perspective, as they are not influenced or constrained by the ideas of a larger group.
While papers with fewer authors may be more disruptive, they may also lack the diverse perspectives and expertise that can come from a larger group of authors. This could potentially limit the depth and breadth of the research presented.
The number of authors is just one factor in determining the level of disruption in a paper. Other factors such as the novelty of the research and its impact on the field also play a role. Researchers can focus on conducting thorough and innovative research to increase the chances of their paper being disruptive, regardless of the number of authors.