Relationship between Scientific Collaboration and Citations of Science Hot Papers

Co-authorship increases the possibility of visibility of articles and reflection of their findings in the research of others. The aim of the present study was to determine the number of authors and the number of citations of hot papers in the Science Citation Index Expanded (SCI-E) in the Web of Science (WOS).

This quantitative study was conducted using the scientometric approach. The research community consisted of 3,475 hot papers in the field of science in WOS from 2020 to 2021. The Spearman correlation coefficient test was used to examine the relationship between the citations of the articles and the number of authors. Data were collected and analyzed using BibExcel, Excel, and SPSS.

The hot papers showed a wide range, from one to 2718 authors. Moreover, a significant correlation was found between the number of authors and the number of citations of hot papers in the field of science (p= 0.000, n= 3475, r= 0.161). Therefore, statistically, there was a positive correlation between the two variables.

Higher scientific collaboration in hot articles increases the number of citations and ultimately increases the visibility of these articles.