Spatial proximity matters: A study on collaboration
Name
journal.pone.0259965.pdf
Description
Published version
Size
1.32 MB
Format
Unknown
Checksum (MD5)
7973a92ef60ae1a0c245451383e3a46b
Author(s)
Salazar Miranda, Ariana
Claudel, Matthew
Date Issued
2021
Journal
PLOS ONE
Publisher
Public Library of Science (PLoS)
Citation
Salazar Miranda, Arianna and Claudel, Matthew. 2021. "Spatial proximity matters: A study on collaboration." PLOS ONE, 16 (12).
Version
Final published version
Abstract
As scientific research becomes increasingly cross-disciplinary, many universities seek to support collaborative activity through new buildings and institutions. This study examines the impacts of spatial proximity on collaboration at MIT from 2005 to 2015. By exploiting a shift in the location of researchers due to building renovations, we evaluate how discrete changes in physical proximity affect the likelihood that researchers co-author. The findings suggest that moving researchers into the same building increases their propensity to collaborate, with the effect plateauing five years after the move. The effects are large when compared to the average rate of collaboration among pairs of researchers, which suggests that spatial proximity is an important tool to support cross-disciplinary collaborative science. Furthermore, buildings that host researchers working in the same or related fields and from multiple departments have a larger effect on their propensity to collaborate.
MIT Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Urban Studies and Planning
Terms of Use
Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license
Persistent DSpace Link
DOI of Published Version
https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0259965
