Efficiency vs. size of research teams

The efficiency of research teams in terms of significant publications has been measured by counting citations in the field of laser research. The size of the research team is defined alternatively as the number of authors of scientific papers, the size of the laboratory, and the size of the entire organization. The efficiency shows a large spread at small team size with some teams two to five times as efficient as the mean and more efficient than large teams which show smaller spread. On the other hand, the mean efficiency of the entire team increases linearly with team size by about one percent per additional author.