Internationalists and locals: international research collaboration in a resource-poor system

Abstract

The principal distinction drawn in this study is between research "internationalists" and "locals." The former are scientists involved in international research collaboration while the latter group are not. These two distinct types of scientist compete for academic prestige, research funding, and international recognition. International research collaboration proves to be a powerful stratifying force. As a clearly defined subgroup, internationalists are a different academic species, accounting for 51.4% of Polish scientists; predominantly male and older, they have longer academic experience and higher academic degrees and occupy higher academic positions. Across all academic clusters, internationalists consistently produce more than 90% of internationally co-authored publications, representing 2320% of locals' productivity for peer-reviewed articles and 1600% for peer-reviewed article equivalents. Internationalists tend to spend less time than locals on teaching-related activities, more time on research, and more time on administrative duties. Based on a large-scale academic survey (N = 3704), some new predictors of international research collaboration were identified by multivariate analyses. The findings have global policy implications for resource-poor science systems "playing catch-up" in terms of academic careers, productivity patterns, and research internationalization policies.

Social stratification in Higher Education: What it means at the micro‐level of the individual academic scientist

“…While numbers differ from country to country, the general patterns are similar across the 11 European countries in question (Kwiek, , ). For instance, the Polish case shows that internationalists are much more productive in terms of internationally co‐authored publications (Table ) at 2,320 per cent of locals' productivity for peer‐reviewed articles and 1,600 per cent for peer‐reviewed article equivalents.…”

“…In university hierarchies of prestige across Europe, internationalists (defined as academic scientists involved in IRC) increasingly compete with locals (defined as those not involved in IRC). Within this theoretical framework, internationalists are seen to compete for international academic recognition while locals tend to focus on research and publication for national consumption (Kwiek, ). However, the extent of international research orientation depends on the researchers themselves (Wagner & Leydesdorff, ) and is disproportionately shaped by individual predilection.…”

Domestic researchers with longer careers generate higher average citation impact but it does not increase over time

“…Older researchers also have larger collaboration networks (Wang, Yu, Bekele, Kong, & Xia, 2017). International researchers in Poland are more productive (Kwiek, 2020) and presumably these tend to be older, having had time to build networks. Collaboration associates with productivity most towards the end of academic careers (Hu, Chen, & Liu, 2014), perhaps with older researchers needing help to continue or stay current.…”

Reflections on women in internationalization

“…In particular, a study found that Polish women academics constitute a productive and internationalized part of Polish academicians (43.6%), and Poland has a relatively high proportion of professors compared to most Western European countries (Kwak & Roszka, 2020). While this rate was 24.1% according to the 2016 report, a more recent report in 2018 suggest that the said rate continues to increase (European Commission, 2019; Kwiek & Roszka, 2020;Kwiek, 2020b). As the participation of women in academia increases, the context in which gender inequalities in international research collaboration are analysed also changes (Kwiek & Roszka, 2020).…”

“…As the participation of women in academia increases, the context in which gender inequalities in international research collaboration are analysed also changes (Kwiek & Roszka, 2020). In recent years, researchers have been conducting further bibliometric studies about gender inequalities in the scientific field (Diezmann & Grieshaber, 2019;Kwiek, 2020b;Madison & Fahlman, 2020).…”