Collaborative publication and research in computer science

Study of collaboration in research and publication is examined as a means for understanding the sociological aspects of R&D and to aid in policy formulation and R&D management. Despite some limitations, nonreactive bibliometric methods are more effective than the survey method for estimating the degree of collaboration in R&D. The mean number of authors per paper and the ratio of multiple-author papers to the total number of papers published in a discipline can be used as unobtrusive indicators of the degree of collaboration in research and publication. Within computer science, there seems to be a higher degree of collaborative R&D in hardware and applications areas than in the software area. The mean number of authors per paper across all the subfields of computer science is about 1.7. The average size of collaborative R&D teams is about 2.7 persons. Computer science as a discipline is closer to mathematics than to biochemistry or chemical engineering, both of which are highly collaborative fields.