Team formation and team impact: The balance between team freshness and repeat collaboration

Meijun Liu, Ajay Jaiswal, Yi Bu, Chao Min, Sijie Yang, Zhibo Liu, Daniel Daniel Acuña, Ying Ding

Abstract: Highlights•We extend an indicator, i.e., team freshness, to measure the extent to which a scientific team incorporates new members, by calculating the fraction of new collaboration relations established within the team.•Team freshness in scientific teams has been increasing in the past half-century.•There exists an inverted-U-shaped association between team freshness and papers’ citations in all the disciplines and in different periods.•Team impact is hampered by team freshness in small-sized teams, while medium-sized and large-sized teams can benefit more from team freshness before the fraction of new collaboration reaches its turning point.