Editorial: Reply to the Letter to the Editor 'Scientific collaboration and quality of scientific research'

Sir: My thanks to Professor James Hartley for his valuable comments on my editorial note entitled "Scientific Collaboration and Quality of Scientific Research" published in Webology 5 (4) (2008). The purpose of the previous editorial note was to determine whether and to what extend the top 100 most-cited papers from the top 10 universities were co-authored. It was shown that ". . . only a small number of the top 100 papers ranked by the number of citations (17 of 100) were published by single authors. In other words, most of the papers (83%) were the results of scientific collaborations by two or more authors. It is obvious that the majority of the top 100 papers produced by the top 10 universities are co-authored papers and thus are collaborative works. In other words, a published paper resulting from collaborative work has a higher chance of attracting more citations. This study indicates that there is a significant relationship between the high citation counts and co-authorships, i.e. highly cited papers are mainly co-authored." The concluding sentences of the previous editorial note are: • "a published paper resulting from collaborative work has a higher chance of attracting more citations"; and • "highly cited papers are mainly co-authored"