Open AccessLost in the Storm: The Academic Collaborations That Went Missing in Hurricane ISSAC
Author(s) -
Campos Raquel,
Leon Fernanda,
McQuillin Ben
Publication year - 2018
Publication title -
the economic journal
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 4.683
H-Index - 160
eISSN - 1468-0297
pISSN - 0013-0133
DOI - 10.1111/ecoj.12566
Subject(s) - association (psychology) , cluster (spacecraft) , storm , politics , political science , library science , public relations , sociology , media studies , psychology , meteorology , computer science , geography , law , psychotherapist , programming language
By exploiting the cancellation of the 2012 American Political Science Association Annual Meeting, we investigate the role of conferences in facilitating academic collaboration. We assembled data sets comprising 17,467 academics, and in difference‐in‐differences analysis we find that the conference cancellation led to a decrease in individuals’ likelihood of co‐authoring an article with another attendant by 16%. Moreover, collaborations formed among attendants of (occurring) conferences are associated with more successful co‐publications: an effect which is sharpest for teams that are new or non‐collocated. Conferences seem to de‐cluster the co‐authorship network. Altogether, our findings demonstrate the importance of conferences in scientific production.