Measuring the impact of co-author count on citation count of research publications

Practically, co-authored research work reaches higher visibility and impact as compared to the individual published work. The objective of this study is to analyze the correlation between the number of co-authors in a published paper and the number of times that paper is cited in the literature. The analysis is divided into three categories: (i) research field-based analysis; (ii) influential co-author-based analysis and (iii) influential first author-based analysis. The ArnetMiner dataset version 6 is used for analysis. The research methodology is composed of research-field-based, influential co-authors-based, and influential co-author as a first author-based correlational analysis of citations for research articles. The research area is defined for each research article using the abstract from the dataset. The results show that most of the research fields have increasing citability with a greater number of co-authors. Research fields like programming languages carry more citations and knowledge representation and reasoning carry fewer citations with a higher number of co-authors in a paper. With an increased H-index of co-author and first co-author in a paper, the association between co-authors and citations is more negative than positive. However, in the field of bioinformatics, the association is positive both with influential an co-author and first co-author of a paper. This paper fulfils the need to identify role of collaboration in gaining research citability. It enhances the credibility of research both in academia and industry.