Periphery authors, network embeddedness, and research impact: The case of Chinese inland scholars

Based on the social capital theory, this article takes the Chinese inland scholars' co-authorship network in the field of information science as the case, and investigates the influence of periphery authors' network embeddedness on research impact by applying Poisson regression model. The empirical results indicate that: (1) Degree centrality positively affect the net citations, (2) an inverted U-shaped relationship exists between the degree centrality and the net citations, which confirms the existence of the optimal collaboration size, and (3) structural hole positively affect the net citations.