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2025 , Vol. 69 >Issue 2: 96 - 107

DOI: https://doi.org/10.13266/j.issn.0252-3116.2025.02.009

RESEARCH PAPERS

A Study on the Relationship Between Scholars’ Collaboration External Impact and Academic Success

  • Yan Xiaohui ,
  • Yang Alex Jie ,
  • Yang Wenxia ,
  • Wang Hao ,
  • Deng Sanhong
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  • 1 Investigation Department, Shanxi Police College, Taiyuan 030401;
    2 School of Information Management, Nanjing University, Nanjing 210023;
    3 Key Laboratory of Data Engineering and Knowledge Services in Provincial Universities (Nanjing University), Nanjing 210023

Received date: 2024-01-26

  Revised date: 2024-05-24

  Online published: 2025-01-25

Supported by

This work is supported by the National Social Science Fund of China project titled “Real-Time Prediction and Long-Term Evaluation of the True Value and Impact of Academic Achievements in the Big Data Environment”(Grant No.19BTQ062).

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Abstract

[Purpose/Significance] Traditional bibliometric indicators fail to capture the distinctions between the internal and external dimensions of academic collaboration networks. This paper introduces new metrics, such as external citations and the external h-index, for evaluating the external impact of scholarly collaboration networks, providing a foundation for a more authentic assessment of scholars’ academic influence. [Method/Process] Utilizing data from the American Physical Society, which includes 463,348 research papers and 234,086 disambiguated authors, this study extracts scholars’ ego-centric collaboration networks from the global network. It distinguishes between internal and external influences within these networks and introduces metrics such as the external citation count and the external h-index. These are tested for consistency against traditional bibliometric indicators and validated using data from prestigious physics awards such as the Nobel Prize, the Wolf Prize, and the Dirac Prize, to demonstrate the effectiveness and superiority of the external impact metrics. [Result/Conclusion] The study reveals significant disparities in the distribution of internal versus external influence within scholarly collaboration networks. The proposed external impact metrics introduced are highly consistent with traditional indicators. Convergence validity analysis shows that the external citation count and external h-index are more precise in identifying award-winning scholars compared to traditional metrics. These findings suggest that the external influence of collaboration networks reflects the true impact of scholars and plays a crucial role in academic achievements. The new metrics proposed here offer insightful implications for constructing future talent evaluation systems and breaking away from the “five only” criteria, providing a pathway for reform in academic assessments.

Key words： scientometrics; scientists’ evaluation; collaborative network; external impact

Cite this article

Yan Xiaohui , Yang Alex Jie , Yang Wenxia , Wang Hao , Deng Sanhong . A Study on the Relationship Between Scholars’ Collaboration External Impact and Academic Success[J]. Library and Information Service, 2025 , 69(2) : 96 -107 . DOI: 10.13266/j.issn.0252-3116.2025.02.009

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