https://doi.org/10.1140/epjds/s13688-023-00439-w
Regular Article
Untangling pair synergy in the evolution of collaborative scientific impact
1
Department of Physics, KAIST, 34141, Daejeon, Republic of Korea
2
School of AI Convergence, Soongsil University, 06978, Seoul, Republic of Korea
3
Center for Complex Systems, KAIST, 34141, Daejeon, Republic of Korea
b
jinhyuk.yun@ssu.ac.kr
c
hjeong@kaist.edu
Received:
8
June
2023
Accepted:
7
December
2023
Published online:
19
December
2023
Synergy, or team chemistry, is an elusive concept that explains how collaboration is able to yield outcomes beyond expectations. Here, we reveal its presence and underlying mechanisms in pairwise scientific collaboration by reconstructing the publication histories of 560,689 individual scientists and 1,026,196 pairs of scientists. We quantify pair synergy by extracting the non-additive effects of collaboration on scientific impact, which are not confounded by prior collaboration experience or luck. We employ a network inference methodology with the stochastic block model to investigate the mechanism of pair synergy and its connection to individual attributes. The inferred block structure, derived solely from the observed types of synergy, can anticipate an undetermined type of synergy between two scientists who have never collaborated. This suggests that synergy arises from a suitable combination of certain, yet unidentified, individual characteristics. Furthermore, the most relevant to pair synergy is research interest, although its diversity does not lead to complementarity across all disciplines. Our results pave the way for understanding the dynamics of collaborative success in science and unlocking the hidden potential of collaboration by matchmaking between scientists.
Key words: Science of science / Team science / Network inference
Supplementary Information The online version contains supplementary material available at https://doi.org/10.1140/epjds/s13688-023-00439-w.
© The Author(s) 2023
Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
