In-depth analysis on China’s international cooperation in science

Abstract

It has been about 30 years since China adopted an open-up and reform policy for global competition and collaboration. This opening-up policy is accompanied by a spectacular growth of the country's economy as well as visibility in the world's scientific literature. Also China' competitiveness in scientific research has grown, and is mirroring the development of the country's economy. On the other hand, international collaboration of most countries dramatically increased during the last two decades and accompanied the growth of science in emerging economies. Thus the question arises of whether growth of competitiveness in research is accompanied by an intensification of collaboration in China as well. In the present study we analyse the dynamics and the national characteristics of China's co-operation in a global context. We also study research profile and citation impact of international collaboration with respect to the corresponding domestic 'standards'.

Characteristics of research in China assessed with Essential Science Indicators

“…The top papers in engineering, molecular biology & genetics, physics, and plant & animal science had more than 100 authors from 9, 8, 20, and 2 countries respectively. The only single author top paper titled ''in search of golden rules: comment on hypothesis-testing Table 6 The top 20 most productive Chinese institutions (Zhou and Glanzel 2010). International papers in most fields had higher impact than that of publications independent of China.…”

Publishing Patterns in BRIC Countries: A Network Analysis

“…Accordingly, our resulting dataset comprises 224 countries, 10 years, and 308 categories. Even though SCImago incudes information since 1996, we chose this time interval because China, one of the BRIC countries, experienced a surge in research activity starting 2006 [22,23]. Furthermore, as we wanted the freshest information available, we carried out research up until the year 2015.…”

Collaborating with Management Academics in a New Economy: Benefits and Challenges

“…In the past two decades, amidst a wide-spread internationalization drive at Chinese universities, international collaboration has been further stimulated through various policy-level initiatives, for example, rewarding publication in international, indexed journals handsomely [25], luring back overseas-trained academics [26], and focusing on collaborating with high-performers (i.e., the United States (U.S.) and the European Union (EU) nations) [27]. Bibliometric research has shown that the proportion of the internationally indexed articles co-authored by Chinese and overseas academics has been on the rise in both natural and social sciences over the decades [5,20].…”

“…Access to local data and resources (25) CMAs' training-related inadequacies (12) Gaining indigenous perspectives (9) Difficulty in communication caused by geographic distance, and coordination of pace and schedule (8) CMAs' good qualities (5) Potential conflicts over authorship and responsibilities (6) Helping with the training of CMAs (4) CMAs' inadequacies in English proficiency and English writing ability (5) Of the 30 OMA respondents, 25 (83.3%) referred to access to local data and resources as a benefit of collaborating with CMAs, with such access covering data, access to local firms, and CMAs' data analysis skills and resources (the advantage of funding and having research students to help with research):…”

“…Previous research on Chinese academics' international collaboration was almost exclusively based on bibliometric methods (e.g., [1,5]). What bibliometric research falls short of, as Melkers and Kiopa [6] (p. 408) have pointed out, is the social dynamics behind the collaboration (see also Hoffman et al, 2014).…”