Research collaboration at Nordic universities

Abstract

Scientific collaboration has become a major issue in science policy. The need to survey and follow up such collaboration calls for statistical indicators sensitive enough to reveal the structure and change of collaborative networks. Bibliometric analysis of co-authored scientific articles is one promising approach. This study presents data generated from a comprehensive analysis of some 20,000 articles produced by 22 Nordic universities (Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, Sweden) in 1993. The results show that scientific collaboration plays a key role for all universities, and that they collaborate with external institutions in just about the same extent. The inter-Nordic university network comprises about ten percent of all institutional collaborations. However, the amount of collaboration varies across fields, physics and medicine having a high degree of collaboration. The inter-Nordic network is of equal importance as the national network in physics and geosciences. Especially, when one looks at international collaboration outside the Nordic arena, the number of overlapping partners is quite low. This suggests that research specialization is the major force governing international contacts.

Bibliometric analysis of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome-related research in the beginning stage

“…The most common mean is through publication. 4 Garfield in 1970 also observed that a recent research focus can be reflected on its publication output. 5 Hence, a dramatic increase of SARS-related publications would be expected shortly after the outbreak.…”

Interregional inventor networks as studied by patent coinventorships

“…Studies in bibliometrics tend to use journal coauthorship to study networks. Some examples includeNewman (2001a,b) who study scienti…c collaboration in physics, biomedical research and computer science,Persson et al (1997) andMelin and Persson (1998) look at collaborative patterns of researchers at Nordic and European universities respectively andOkubo and Sjöberg (2000) examine internationalization tendencies of coauthorship in researching Swedish …rms. 9 This example is taken fromGranovetter (1973).…”

A Golden Decade

“…This is an important topic in bibliometric research, as several studies confirm that multiple authorship tends to increase the impact of the research (Franceschet and Constantini 2010, Persson et al 2004, The Royal Society 2011. A study using data from 1993 showed increasing collaboration in Nordic authorship in different fields, although the data varied greatly across fields (Persson et al 1997). A more recent study also indicates an increase in collaboration among Norwegian scholars during the past decade (Smeby and Trondal 2005).…”