How much the shared ocean or lake basins connect the researchers in neighbouring countries?

Abstract

This paper evaluates the importance of jointly conducted research versus national, when neighbouring countries are trying to study a topic of their mutual interest. The chosen topic was the shared ocean or lake basin. The number of non-mutual and mutual articles in the period 1999-2008 for seven pairs of neighbouring countries was analysed by extracting published articles and citations from the Web of Science database. It was found that mutual articles have generally better visibility than the non-mutual articles, valid even for large and developed countries. Also, the percentage of self-citations in the mutual articles is much lower than in the non-mutual ones. However, the citations of the non-mutual articles are influenced by the development of the country or, in some cases, by the development of the countries in which researchers from a certain country are presently working (this applies strongly to the Eastern Europe countries).