Abstract
Collaboration cannot be taken for granted in a scientific environment where scholars strive for a sound reputation and compete for jobs, research grants or publication opportunities. However, participating in science has become more and more a matter of teamwork than the business of a lone wolf. This contribution examines whether scientific collaboration, as indicated by the number of publications with coauthors, is associated with a more successful scientific career than publishing as a single author, and whether a cooperation norm can be observed regarding coauthorship in science.We propose and discuss three theoretical approaches which we deem relevant for understanding collaboration and coauthorship in science: (1) exchange and game theory, which we (2) complement with network theory and (3) contrast with perspectives of new institutionalism. We use data from people who earned a habilitation (second PhD thesis) between 1985-2005 in sociology, mathematics or law in a West German university. For each discipline, we examine whether (a) the success of postdoc scholars increases with the share (and number) of coauthored publications, and (b) whether coauthorships have become more common over time. The success of scholars is operationalized by the “risk” of being appointed to a professorship. Event history techniques are applied to investigate the association between collaboration and success. The results shed light on the mechanisms behind scientific collaboration and allow us to draw implications about the relevance of cooperation norms in science.
