Do types of collaboration change citation? Collaboration and citation patterns of South African science publications

Bibliographic records are extensively used in the study of citations. Based on ISI data, this paper examines citation patterns of the publications of South African scientists in recent years. In particular, the focus of this paper is on citations as to the collaborative dimensions of South African scientists in their publications. The study reveals that the number of citations received by a publication varies not only according to the collaboration but also to the types of collaboration of the authors who are involved in its production. Furthermore, it emerges that the impact of citations on publications differs from discipline to discipline, and affiliating sector to sector, regardless of collaboration.