An investigation of impact of research collaboration on academic performance in Italy

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to investigate theoretically and empirically the impact of research collaborations on the scientific performance of Italian academic institutions. Data are derived from the international Scopus and Web of Science databases. We consider both quantity (the number of publications made in collaboration) and quality indicators from different databases (using indexes such as IF5Y (5-year impact factor of the journal, Web of Science), SJR (SCImago Journal Rank—key integral indicator of the quality of journals, Scopus), IPP (Impact per Publication, Scopus), AIS (Article Influence Scores, Web of Science), H-index (Google Scholar Hirsch-index metric) to evaluate the Italian case of scientific research. To this end, we develop a theoretical and empirical model to consider endogeneity of explanatory variables, the generalized method of moment estimation. The results suggest that international collaborations have a higher impact on the research quality index in Italy.