Abstract:
Collaboration is a central aspect of research, with variable impact on research output and quality. Its assessment is commonly based on citation count, but this is an inadequate measure in biomedical research. The aim of this preliminary study is to determine the impact of collaboration at three levels on the quality of dental therapy research using a valid and reliable instrument. Ninety-nine papers published in four ISI dental journals were analyzed using the MINCIR scale for methodological quality (MQ). Correlations and a linear regression model were used to determine the impact of collaboration on MQ. There was a positive and significant correlation between MQ and number of authors (r=0.2991; p=0.0026) and countries (r=0.2253; p=0.0249), but not institutions (r=0.1750; p=0.0832). The linear regression model for MQ explains 20.32% of the variance; only the number of authors and journal quartile were significant. Collaboration has little impact on MQ in this area.
Machine summary:
Inti rii‹itiona 1 Jourii‹il o]'In]'ormo tion Scien‹e and Mana$eiitent Vol. 15, No. I, 2017, 69-93 Impact of Collaboration on Research Quality: A Case Analysis of Dental Research Ricardo Cartes-Velasquez Carlos Manterola Assistant Professor, School of Dentistry, Full Professor, PhD Program in Medical Universidad de Concepcion, Concepcion, Sciences, Faculty of Medicine, Universidad de Chile.
The aim of this preliminary study is to determine the impact of collaboration at three levels on the quality of dental therapy research using a valid and reliable instrument.
This relies on the notion that collaboration has a positive impact on scientific output and quality (Bote, Vicente, Olmeda-Gomez & Moya-Anegon, 2013; Lee & Bozeman, 2005) and vice versa (Abramo, D'Angelo & Solazzi, 201 lb), but this has not been confirmed in all fields or regions (Abramo, D'Angelo & Di Costa, 2009; Sooryamoorthy, 2009), and is even a counter-intuitive effect in hyper-authored papers (Franceschet & Constantini, 2010).
In the biomedical sciences several instruments have been designed to determine research quality, the most important being the level of evidence (LoE) rankings (Manterola & Zavando, 2009), checklists for reports (Simera, Moher, Hirst, Hoey, Schulz & Altman, 2010), and methodological quality (MQ) scales (Cartes-Velasquez, Manterola, Aravena & Moraga, 2014).
The aim of this preliminary study is to determine the impact of collaboration at the micro (author), meso (institution) and macro (country) levels on the MQ of dental therapy research published in four representative ISI journals.
This preliminary study focused on evaluating the impact of collaboration on research quality based on a valid, reliable and ad-hoc instrument for dental therapy research (Cartes- Velasquez et al.