Spatial proximity matters: A study on collaboration

As scientific research becomes increasingly cross-disciplinary, many universities seek to support collaborative activity through new buildings and institutions. This study examines the impacts of spatial proximity on collaboration at MIT from 2005 to 2015. By exploiting a shift in the location of re...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:PloS one 2021-12, Vol.16 (12), p.e0259965-e0259965
Main Authors: Salazar Miranda, Arianna, Claudel, Matthew
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Biology and Life Sciences
Biomedical Research - organization & administration
Biomedical Research - statistics & numerical data
Buildings
City planning
Collaboration
College campuses
Communication
Cooperation
COVID-19
Departments
Distances
Earth Sciences
Engineering and Technology
Evaluation
Facility Design and Construction
Geography
Humans
Interdisciplinary aspects
Interdisciplinary Communication
Measurement
Medicine and Health Sciences
Methods
Movement
People and Places
Proximity
Remodeling, restoration, etc
Renovation
Research and Analysis Methods
Research Personnel - psychology
Research Personnel - statistics & numerical data
Researchers
Scientific research
Social Sciences
Spatial Behavior
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Summary:As scientific research becomes increasingly cross-disciplinary, many universities seek to support collaborative activity through new buildings and institutions. This study examines the impacts of spatial proximity on collaboration at MIT from 2005 to 2015. By exploiting a shift in the location of researchers due to building renovations, we evaluate how discrete changes in physical proximity affect the likelihood that researchers co-author. The findings suggest that moving researchers into the same building increases their propensity to collaborate, with the effect plateauing five years after the move. The effects are large when compared to the average rate of collaboration among pairs of researchers, which suggests that spatial proximity is an important tool to support cross-disciplinary collaborative science. Furthermore, buildings that host researchers working in the same or related fields and from multiple departments have a larger effect on their propensity to collaborate.
ISSN:1932-6203
1932-6203
DOI:10.1371/journal.pone.0259965