Assessing the Impact of the National Institute of Standards and Technology’s Research Collaborations

The Information Services Office (ISO) of the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) conducted a study to assess the impact of NIST research collaborations by analyzing the NIST papers coauthored with other researchers external to NIST. This request from NIST senior management focused on the number of unique non-NIST coauthors on NIST-authored papers and the number of unique institutions and countries with which NIST collaborated on publications for the past five years. This article describes the methodology used to assess the impact of NIST’s publication collaborations and shares the results of ISO’s study.