Understanding Patterns of International Scientific Collaboration

Abstract

International scientific collaboration has increased both in volume and importance. In this article, the authors study the interpretation of macro-level data on international coauthorship collaboration. They address such questions as how one might explain countryto-country differences in the rates of international coauthorship, networks of international scientific collaboration among countries, and patterns of international collaboration in scientific fields. Attention is drawn to cognitive, social, historical, geopolitical, and economic factors as potential determinants of the observed patterns. They present a methodology that gives one a measure, independent of size, of countries'propensities to collaborate internationally.The first collaborative scientific paper was published in 16f5,' and the number of collaborative papers has increased ever since, first slowly, then dramatically after the middle of the eighteenth century. Beaver and Rosen noted collaborative linkages across national borders as early as the nineteenth century.' These linkages increased toward the end of the century, and international collaboration has grown in importance throughout the present century.

Evolution and convergence of the patterns of international scientific collaboration

“…The literature has showed a difference of scientific production across countries, citations of articles, and coauthored papers among countries/research institutions for various fields of science (6,12,14,(16)(17)(18). The pioneering study by Frame and Carpenter (14) showed, using the data from the 1973 Science Citation Index, that basic fields (e.g., physics) have higher levels of international collaboration than predominantly applied fields (e.g., engineering/technology).…”

“…In this study, we analyze the recent fraction of internationally coauthored papers for different fields of science, which is compared with the results from earlier studies (14,16) to detect the long-run patterns of international scientific collaboration.…”

“…This dataset is the source to compute the fraction of papers that have international institutional coauthorships for different fields of science. We analyze data of 11 leading scientific countries and seven research fields to provide homogenous results with previous studies (14,16).…”

When do researchers collaborate? Toward a model of collaboration propensity

“…In addition, researchers have used similar methods, along with network analysis more recently, to demonstrate the rise in collaboration across international borders (Luukkonen, 1992), the variation in frequencies of collaboration in different fields (Laband & Tollison, 2000;Newman, 2001), and the effects of computer-mediated communication media on the frequency and structure of collaborations (Walsh & Maloney, 2002). In addition, studies in this general class have found and analyzed patterns in these co-authorships, leading to findings that, for example, confirm Crane's (1972) notion of the invisible college of geographically distributed researchers well known to each other (D. J. d. S. Price, 1986), and the presence of intellectual centers in the global scientific arena (Luukkonen, 1992). In some cases, such centers are rendered explicit through the establishment of distributed multidisciplinary research centers that foster collaboration (Hara, Solomon, Kim, & Sonnenwald, 2003).…”

New Approach to the Visualization of International Scientific Collaboration

“…5,6 These networks are conditioned by social and cultural factors as well as scientific ones, all well documented in the specialized literature. [7][8][9][10] Depending on the level of aggregation under analysis and the techniques used, these conditioning factors can be explored in greater detail. Such a focus affords an opportunity to elaborate indicators that reveal the organization of the patterns of communication, and the possibility of generating visual representations of the system in which they are rooted.…”