Understanding scientific collaboration through the sequence of authors in the publication bylines and the diversity of collaborators

In science of team science, it is critical to investigate the patterns of scientific collaboration and how these patterns result in different impacts. In this research, we investigate the relationship among (a) scientific collaboration, (b) the sequence of authors in the publication bylines, and (c) the diversity of their collaborators. The diversity of collaborators is quantified with two dimensions, namely topic and impact diversities. Using the ArnetMiner dataset containing ACM-indexed publications in computer science, we find that the following two patterns tend to lead higher-impact scientific publications: (1) greater topic diversity of collaborators plus more tendency to work as leading authors (including first and/or corresponding authors); and (2) less topic diversity of collaborators plus less tendency to work as leading authors. Meanwhile, from the perspective of impact diversity, the results of our empirical study show that authors who work as more leading authors and collaborate with less impact diversity researchers have tendencies to receive more citations than those with collaborators with greater impact diversity.Financial support from Mobility Program Salvador de Madariaga2016 (PR2016-00479) funded by the Ministry of Education, Culture and Sports (Spain), and State Programme of Research, Development, and Innovation oriented to the Challenges of the Society (Ref. CSO2014-57770-R) funded by the Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness (Spain)Peer reviewe