Causality between team composition and success in persistent collaborations

Determine whether the observed associations between team composition and academic success in persistent scientific collaborations are causal, or whether academic success is instead a prerequisite for collaborations to persist and survive.

Background

The paper analyzes over half a million statistically validated cores of persistent scientific collaborations using OpenAlex data, characterizing their formation, composition (including age, affiliation, and disciplinary expertise), productivity, and impact. Multiple associations are reported—for example, multi-university teams formed after 2000 exhibiting higher impact, and an inverted U-shaped relationship between knowledge broadness and impact—alongside temporal phenomena such as random impact positioning and hot-streaks.

Given these empirical associations, the authors explicitly note that it remains unresolved whether the observed links between team composition and success reflect causal mechanisms versus survivorship or selection effects where success enables collaborations to persist. Establishing causality would clarify whether specific compositional features actively drive impact and productivity or are byproducts of persistence and success.