Working Paper Cnr-Ceris, N° 18/2014

Labour productivity and social network metrics in scientific research

Greta Falavigna, Alessandro Manello^*

National Research Council of Italy
Institute for Economic Research on Firm and Growth
CNR-Ceris, via Real Collegio 30,
10024 Moncalieri (To), Italy

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Abstract: This paper presents an analysis of relationships between collaborations and scientific outputs of the Italian National Research Council (CNR). In order to evaluate collaborations among CNR institutes and between CNR institutes and universities, social network metrics have been applied with the aim to measure relationships and to understand if to cooperate allows researchers to publish higher quality outputs, improving their labour productivity. Research institutes are considered as nodes of the internal collaboration network, following the main aim of recent reform. Collaborations are stimulated not only by governments with the aim to have knowledge spillovers but they can improve citations and also their reputation. This last is extremely relevant for winning competitions, calls or grants. In this paper authors used data of scientific publications related to all institutes of CNR for the 2007 year and they ask to the question if researchers that publish more and better are those that collaborate more.

Keywords: labour productivity, social network metrics, research institutes.

JEL Codes: I23, J24

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