The continuity and citation impact of scientific collaboration with different gender composition

Abstract

Scientific collaboration has become an important approach for knowledge production and innovation and has received wide attention. Although gender, a demographic characteristic of scientists, has been found to influence scientific collaboration, little research has associated gender with continuous collaboration. In the current study, we classified collaboration pairs by the genders of the two collaborators and explored the relationships among gender composition, collaboration continuity, and citation impact using regression analyses. Female scholars were found to limit continuity for the collaboration pair. The results also showed that inter-gender collaborations were less continuous than intra-gender collaborations after considering the gender difference in individual persistence. In addition, we showed that the relationship between continuity and citation impact was significantly positive, and was stronger if the collaboration pairs included female scholars. This study provides a deeper understanding of gender-related scientific collaboration. It also provides continuity-related suggestions for researchers in inter-gender collaborations.