Does scientific collaboration increase the impact of ecological articles?

We examined the effects of different types of collaboration on the citation rates of 837 research papers published in Oecologia from 1998 through 2000. Multiauthored papers had higher annual citation rates, but also higher self-citation rates, than single-authored papers. Interdisciplinary collaboration between institutions increased citation rates, whereas in-house collaboration reduced them. Contrary to our predictions, international collaboration had no effect on the citation rates of ecological papers, and US ecologists benefited from collaboration more than their European colleagues. Altogether, our results indicate that scientific collaboration in ecology has a rather minor effect on the impact of the resulting publications, as measured by their citation rates. © 2005 American Institute of Biological Sciences.