How to improve research quality? Examining the impacts of collaboration intensity and member diversity in collaboration networks

Better research quality not only inspires scholars to continue their research, but also increases the possibility of higher research budgets from sponsors. Given the importance of research quality, this study proposes that utilizing social capital (i.e., research collaboration) might be a promising avenue to achieve better research quality. In addition, as every scholar has his or her own expertise and knowledge, the diversity of collaborating members might be an extra resource for reinforcing research quality. The purpose of this study is to investigate the impact of research collaboration and member diversity on research quality, including the number of citations, the impact factor, and the size of the research award. To explore unknown associations, the author adopts two data sources, that is, the Social Science Citation Index database and academic database of a university, to verify the hypotheses. The results show that a higher intensity at which scholars are embedded in a collaboration network, results in higher research quality. However, member diversity does not seem to be a major concern during the organization of a research group. Research quality is not affected, regardless of whether a scholar collaborates with different or the same co-authors.