The Impact of Discussion, Awareness, and Collaboration Network Position on Research Performance of Engineering School Faculty

Abstract

We use a social network analysis to examine the role of various types of interactions among the faculty of an American engineering school, ranging from mere awareness to full coauthorship, on academic research productivity (measured by weighted publication rates) and impact (measured by weighted citation rates). Our results suggest that central positions in the discussion network have the most significant impact on individual work performance. However, we observe that increasing centrality exhibits diminishing returns, presumably because of the overhead associated with sustaining too many research interactions. Our results also suggest that interdisciplinary research discussions promote both research productivity and impact.

Keywords: collaboration, social networks, academic publishing, research performance

JEL Classification: O31