Distribution of labor, productivity and innovation in collaborative science

Autor: Floriana Gargiulo, Maria Castaldo, Tommaso Venturini, Paolo Frasca
Jazyk: angličtina
Rok vydání: 2022
Předmět:
Zdroj: Applied Network Science, Vol 7, Iss 1, Pp 1-15 (2022)
Druh dokumentu: article
ISSN: 2364-8228
DOI: 10.1007/s41109-022-00456-0
Popis: Abstract In this paper, we investigate the process of scientific discovery using an under-exploited source of information: the Polymath projects. Polymath projects are an original attempt to solve a series mathematical problems collectively and in a collaborative online environment. To investigate the Polymath experiment, we analyze all the posts related to the projects that have resulted in a peer-reviewed publication. We focus in particular on the organization of the scientific labor and on the innovations that result from the contributions of the different authors. We find that a high presence of occasional contributors increases the productivity of the most active users and the overall productivity of the forums (i.e., the number of posts grows super-linearly with the number of contributors). We argue that, in large-scale collaborations, the serendipitous interaction between occasional contributors can be crucial to the scientific process, and individual contributions from occasional participants can open new directions of research.
Databáze: Directory of Open Access Journals