Coauthorship in academic journals: Implications for international collaboration and alliances

Abstract

Based on the knowledge-based resource theory of alliance, we analyze coauthorship collaboration. We find that (1) collaboration increases the impact of published articles; (2) articles with nonalphabetical author listing are associated with fewer citations; and (3) barriers to transferring knowledge lowers an article's impact, especially if authors do not take ownership over the article. Coauthors who do not act as if they were senior authors undermine coauthorship collaboration, resulting in lower citations on the article. Our results suggest that articles with alphabetical author listing receive more citations, questioning the norm in journals of some disciplines that advocate nonalphabetical author listing.