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Always thought telecommuting would be great for your lifestyle, but a bad for your career? It is, at least according to a new study out of Harvard Medical School, of all places.
In a new paper published in the journal PLoS ONE, Isaac Kohane, a professor of pediatrics at Children’s Hospital Boston and Kyungjoon Lee, a research assistant at the Center for Biomedical Informatics at Harvard Medical School, found a strong correlation between the physical proximity of researchers, and the impact of their work as measured by citations of resulting publications.
The researchers found that, on average, a paper with four or fewer authors who are located in the same building was cited 45 percent more than if the authors were in different buildings. Generally, citations decreased as the distance between first and last authors increased.
“Essentially, at all of these scales, the closer the first and last author are located, the more impactful that paper is as measured by how much more it is cited,” says Lee. “This finding was true when there were only two authors, but was also true with dozens of authors on the same paper.”
But it isn't just an issue for telecommuters. Kohane's research underscores what we know already: even in the office, you need to get up and talk to other people. “If you want people to collaborate, these findings reinforce the need to create architectures and facilities that support frequent, physical interactions," Kohane tells the Harvard Gazette. "Otherwise it’s really out of sight, out of mind.”
