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Interact."],"published-print":{"date-parts":[[2019,11,7]]},"abstract":"<jats:p>How does the number of collaborators affect individual productivity? Results of prior research have been conflicting, with some studies reporting an increase in individual productivity as the number of collaborators grows, while other studies showing that the free-rider effect skews the effort invested by individuals, making larger groups less productive. The difference between these schools of thought is substantial: if a super-scaling effect exists, as suggested by former studies, then as groups grow, their productivity will increase even faster than their size, super-linearly improving their efficiency. We address this question by studying two planetary-scale collaborative systems: GitHub and Wikipedia. By analyzing the activity of over 2 million users on these platforms, we discover that the interplay between group size and productivity exhibits complex, previously-unobserved dynamics: the productivity of smaller groups scales super-linearly with group size, but saturates at larger sizes. This effect is not an artifact of the heterogeneity of productivity: the relation between group size and productivity holds at the individual level. People tend to do more when collaborating with more people. We propose a generative model of individual productivity that captures the non-linearity in collaboration effort. The proposed model is able to explain and predict group work dynamics in GitHub and Wikipedia by capturing their maximally informative behavioral features, and it paves the way for a principled, data-driven science of collaboration.<\/jats:p>","DOI":"10.1145\/3359176","type":"journal-article","created":{"date-parts":[[2019,11,8]],"date-time":"2019-11-08T13:40:21Z","timestamp":1573220421000},"page":"1-24","update-policy":"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1145\/crossmark-policy","source":"Crossref","is-referenced-by-count":17,"title":["Collaboration Drives Individual Productivity"],"prefix":"10.1145","volume":"3","author":[{"given":"Goran","family":"Muri\u0107","sequence":"first","affiliation":[{"name":"USC Information Sciences Institute, Marina del Rey, CA, USA"}]},{"given":"Andres","family":"Abeliuk","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"USC Information Sciences Institute, Marina Del Rey, CA, USA"}]},{"given":"Kristina","family":"Lerman","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"USC Information Sciences Institute, Marina Del Rey, CA, USA"}]},{"given":"Emilio","family":"Ferrara","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"USC Information Sciences Institute, Marina Del Rey, CA, USA"}]}],"member":"320","published-online":{"date-parts":[[2019,11,7]]},"reference":[{"key":"e_1_2_1_1_1","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1038\/nature08631"},{"volume-title":"The mythical man-month: essays on software engineering","author":"Brooks Frederick P.","key":"e_1_2_1_2_1","unstructured":"Frederick P. Brooks . 1995. The mythical man-month: essays on software engineering . Addison-Wesley Professional . 322 pages. Frederick P. Brooks. 1995. The mythical man-month: essays on software engineering. Addison-Wesley Professional. 322 pages."},{"key":"e_1_2_1_3_1","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1177\/1368430211419174"},{"key":"e_1_2_1_4_1","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1038\/nature12774"},{"key":"e_1_2_1_5_1","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1109\/ICSM.2007.4362644"},{"key":"e_1_2_1_6_1","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1287\/mnsc.46.12.1554.12072"},{"key":"e_1_2_1_7_1","volume-title":"Predicting and Explaining Behavioral Data with Structured Feature Space Decomposition. (oct","author":"Fennell Peter G","year":"2018","unstructured":"Peter G Fennell , Zhiya Zuo , and Kristina Lerman . 2018. Predicting and Explaining Behavioral Data with Structured Feature Space Decomposition. (oct 2018 ). arxiv: 1810.09841 Peter G Fennell, Zhiya Zuo, and Kristina Lerman. 2018. Predicting and Explaining Behavioral Data with Structured Feature Space Decomposition. (oct 2018). arxiv: 1810.09841"},{"key":"e_1_2_1_8_1","volume-title":"Team assembly mechanisms determine collaboration network structure and team performance. Science","author":"Guimer\u00e0 Roger","year":"2005","unstructured":"Roger Guimer\u00e0 , Brian Uzzi , Jarrett Spiro , and Lu\u00ed s A. Nunes Amaral . 2005. Team assembly mechanisms determine collaboration network structure and team performance. Science , Vol. 308 , 5722 ( 2005 ), 697--702. https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1126\/science.1106340 arxiv: NIHMS 150003 Roger Guimer\u00e0, Brian Uzzi, Jarrett Spiro, and Lu\u00ed s A. Nunes Amaral. 2005. Team assembly mechanisms determine collaboration network structure and team performance. Science, Vol. 308, 5722 (2005), 697--702. https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1126\/science.1106340 arxiv: NIHMS150003"},{"key":"e_1_2_1_9_1","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1037\/0022-3514.79.4.580"},{"key":"e_1_2_1_10_1","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1145\/2597073.2597074"},{"volume-title":"Bongwon Suh, and Todd Mytkowicz. [n. d.]. Power of the few vs. wisdom of the crowd: Wikipedia and the rise of the bourgeoisie. World wide web","author":"Kittur Aniket","key":"e_1_2_1_11_1","unstructured":"Aniket Kittur , Ed Chi, Bryan A Pendleton , Bongwon Suh, and Todd Mytkowicz. [n. d.]. Power of the few vs. wisdom of the crowd: Wikipedia and the rise of the bourgeoisie. World wide web , Vol. 1 , 2 ( [n. d.]), 19. Aniket Kittur, Ed Chi, Bryan A Pendleton, Bongwon Suh, and Todd Mytkowicz. [n. d.]. Power of the few vs. wisdom of the crowd: Wikipedia and the rise of the bourgeoisie. World wide web, Vol. 1, 2 ( [n. d.]), 19."},{"key":"e_1_2_1_12_1","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1145\/1460563.1460572"},{"key":"e_1_2_1_13_1","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1098\/rsos.160007"},{"key":"e_1_2_1_14_1","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1037\/0022-3514.90.4.644"},{"key":"e_1_2_1_15_1","first-page":"1014","article-title":"Newton-Raphson and EM Algorithms for Linear Mixed-Effects Models for Repeated-Measures Data","volume":"83","author":"Lindstrom Mary J","year":"1988","unstructured":"Mary J Lindstrom and Douglas M Bates . 1988 . Newton-Raphson and EM Algorithms for Linear Mixed-Effects Models for Repeated-Measures Data . J. Amer. Statist. Assoc. , Vol. 83 , 404 (1988), 1014 -- 1022 . Mary J Lindstrom and Douglas M Bates. 1988. Newton-Raphson and EM Algorithms for Linear Mixed-Effects Models for Repeated-Measures Data. J. Amer. Statist. Assoc., Vol. 83, 404 (1988), 1014--1022.","journal-title":"J. Amer. Statist. 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Aristotle vs. Ringelmann: A response to Scholtes et al. on Superlinear Production in Open Source Software. arXiv preprint arXiv:1608.03608 (2016)."},{"key":"e_1_2_1_17_1","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1371\/journal.pone.0153048"},{"key":"e_1_2_1_18_1","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1109\/32.544349"},{"key":"e_1_2_1_19_1","volume-title":"Yong-Yeol Ahn, and Alessandro Flammini.","author":"Nematzadeh Azadeh","year":"2016","unstructured":"Azadeh Nematzadeh , Giovanni Luca Ciampaglia , Yong-Yeol Ahn, and Alessandro Flammini. 2016 . Information Overload in Group Communication : From Conversation to Cacophony in the Twitch Chat . (oct 2016). https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1126\/science.1193147 Azadeh Nematzadeh, Giovanni Luca Ciampaglia, Yong-Yeol Ahn, and Alessandro Flammini. 2016. Information Overload in Group Communication: From Conversation to Cacophony in the Twitch Chat. 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