The research is probably best applied to what it studied, producing 'influential' research papers. It could well be that the papers were more 'influential' bec

The research is probably best applied to what it studied, producing 'influential' research papers. It could well be that the papers were more 'influential' because with having the team co-located it got enough notice within the network to gain popularity. What I mean by this is that with 5 people in a concentrated area talking about a paper that it got to the 'front page' of what academics in the area were working on. It's like saying teams work better closer because those teams got more links to the front page of HN because they each upvoted the story enough to get it on the front page where it could gain enough votes to stay.