Collaboration in the Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences in Australia

Abstract

This paper reports on the first large-scale quantitative investigation into collaboration, demonstrated in co-authorship, by Australian humanities, arts and social sciences (HASS) researchers. Web of Science data were extracted for Australian HASS publications, with a focus on the softer social sciences, over the period 2004 – 2013. The findings show that collaboration has increased over the last ten years, with strong intra-region collaboration concentrated on the east coast of Australia. International collaboration occurred most frequently with English speaking countries at vast distances from Australia. On average, fields in the social sciences collaborated at higher rates and attracted higher citations than humanities fields, but co-authorship of any kind was likely to increase citation rates. The results provide a snapshot of collaboration by Australian HASS authors in this time period and can be used as a benchmark to explore collaboration patterns in the future.