The moderating roles of academic age and institutional sector on the relationship between co-authorship network centrality and academic research performance

The purpose of this paper is to investigate whether potentially disadvantaged groups of researchers derive more research performance benefits from co-authorship network centrality (degree, closeness and betweenness).

The paper builds on Badar et al. (2013), which found positive associations of network centrality on research performance with a moderating relationship of gender for female authors. Using data from ISI Web of Science (SCI), the authors study the same domestic co-authorship network of Chemistry researcher in Pakistan publishing from years 2002-2009 and investigate the moderating role of academic age and institutional sector on the relationship between co-authorship network centrality (degree, closeness, and betweenness) and the academic research performance (aggregate impact factor) of chemistry university/institute faculty members in Pakistan.

Ordinary least squares (OLS)-regression findings indicated a positive relationship between degree centrality and research performance with a positive moderating relationship for both academic age and institutional sector on the relationship between degree centrality and research performance for junior faculty members and faculty members employed in private sector universities/research institutes.

The findings can be heartening and motivating for junior faculty and private institute faculty in Pakistan in suggesting opportunities to surpass barriers of domination and poor resource access through co-authorship ties and structural social capital.

This paper adds to the limited research by strengthening the argument that potentially disadvantaged faculty with certain individual (academic age) and work-related characteristics (institutional sector) may benefit differentially from their co-authorship network centrality.