Evaluating scholars based on their academic collaboration activities: two indices, the RC-index and the CC-index, for quantifying collaboration activities of researchers and scientific communities

Abstract

Although there are many studies for quantifying the academic performance of researchers, such as measuring the scientific performance based on the number of publications, there are no studies about quantifying the collaboration activities of researchers. This study addresses this shortcoming. Based on three measures, namely the collaboration network structure of researchers, the number of collaborations with other researchers, and the productivity index of co-authors, two new indices, the RC-Index and CC-Index, are proposed for quantifying the collaboration activities of researchers and scientific communities. After applying these indices on a data set generated from publication lists of five schools of information systems, this study concludes with a discussion of the shortcomings and advantages of these indices.