La colaboración científica: Principales líneas de investigación y retos de futuro

Abstract

The construction of knowledge is a collaborative process that has seen a dramatic growth over recent decades, since almost all research activities now involve increasing numbers of researchers, institutions, disciplines and countries. The present study provides a bibliographic review of the literature on research collaboration and identifies pioneering work on the topic, the types of studies undertaken and the variables analyzed. Several approaches are discussed: the "classical" approach, based on bibliometric indicators, which has taken on a new dimension with Social Network Analysis; and quantitative and qualitative approaches, which attempt to investigate the motivations and dynamics of collaborative work. The study of scientific collaboration has been undertaken using a variety of methodologies from different disciplinary perspectives. This was made evident at the Congress "Scientific collaboration: a multidisciplinary approach" held at University of Valencia in November 2013, which brought together leading experts on the subject from around Spain. This special issue of Revista Española de Documentación Científica contains ten selected papers presented at that event. We conclude this introductory paper by examining the main challenges that research into scientific collaboration should explore.