International research collaboration in Africa: a bibliometric and thematic analysis

It is widely recognised that science in Africa will benefit from international research collaboration (IRC), and therefore studies have been done on IRC in Africa (hereafter: Africa-related IRC research). However, there is no information on the development of Africa-related IRC research, the geographical location of the scientists interested in the topic, the visibility of the literature and the themes researched. This information makes it possible to understand relevant aspects in the context of IRC in Africa, which are useful for identifying IRC strengths, weaknesses and opportunities. It also allows paving the way for future research on this topic. Using discipline–specific terms, bibliometric, and thematic analysis, I collected the literature on Africa-related IRC research indexed in the Web of Science Core Collection (WoS). The results showed that the number of publications on the topic has increased, few African countries have researched the topic, a third of the publications were written exclusively by African scientists, and the topic has high visibility. The panoply of publications revealed that patterns, driving factors, effects, networks, asymmetries, and policies concerning IRC were the main themes researched.

     

Research emphasis and collaboration in Africa

Scientific co-authorship of African researchers has become a fashionable topic in the recent scientometric literature. Researchers are investigating the effects, modes, dynamics and motives of collaboration in a continental research system which is in an embryonic stage and in different stages of development from country to country. In this article we attempt to provide some additional evidence by examining both patterns of collaboration at country and continental levels and the scientific disciplines emphasised. Our findings indicate that the continent’s research emphasises medical and natural resources disciplines to the detriment of disciplines supporting knowledge based economies and societies. Furthermore, we identify that the collaborative patterns in Africa are substantial higher than in the rest of the world. A number of questions related to research collaboration and its effects are raised.     

International collaboration clusters in Africa

Recent discussion about the increase in international research collaboration suggests a comprehensive global network centred around a group of core countries and driven by generic socio-economic factors where the global system influences all national and institutional outcomes. In counterpoint, we demonstrate that the collaboration pattern for countries in Africa is far from universal. Instead, it exhibits layers of internal clusters and external links that are explained not by monotypic global influences but by regional geography and, perhaps even more strongly, by history, culture and language. Analysis of these bottom-up, subjective, human factors is required in order to provide the fuller explanation useful for policy and management purposes.     

Scientific research collaboration in China

The purpose of this study is to analyze the characteristics of scientific research collaboration in China by bibliometric indicators, collaborative index, degree of collaboration and level of collaboration, based on the articles published in 1218 titles of Chinese scientific and technical periodicals in the year 1993. The results suggest that the current trend of collaboration among multiauthors and multiinstetutions for producing scientific articles may have reflected the multidimensional science of China.     

Regional research and foreign collaboration

Motivated by the merging of four Swedish counties to a larger administrative and political unit with increased responsibilities, a comprehensive study of regional–foreign research collaboration was carried out. Various multivariate methods were applied for the depiction of collaborative networks of various compositions and at various levels of aggregation. Other aspects investigated concerned the influence of institutions and countries on regional–foreign collaboration and the relation between collaboration and research fields. Findings showed that foreign research collaboration was concentrated to three major regional institutions, each with a characteristic collaborative context. The influence of domestic collaboration was notable with regard to medical research while collaboration within the field of physics and astronomy was characteristic for pure regional–foreign collaboration, which was the dominating type of research collaboration throughout the period of observation (1998–2006).     

Sectoral collaboration in biomedical research and development

This paper explores the role of sectors in scientific research and development networks by drawing on bibliometric analyses and innovation systems and triple helix literatures. I conducted a bibliometric study of Vancouver Canada’s worldwide infection and immunity network and examined network structure through sociograms, social network metrics, as well as relational contingency table and ANOVA network analyses. Universities are the key network sector followed by hospitals and government organisations. The private sector plays a weak role. Most sectors show a preference for collaborating within, as opposed to across, sectors. This trend is most pronounced in hospitals and least pronounced among firms. Hospitals and universities collaborate well above statistical expectations. I discuss the implications of these findings for future science policy and studies of research and development networks.     

Science and scientific collaboration in South Africa: apartheid and after

Scientific collaboration is growing in its importance; more so in Asian and African countries. This paper examines the scenario of science and scientific collaboration in South Africa which had passed through the colonial and apartheid regimes before it became a democracy in 1994. South African science under distinct political periods moved through some difficult periods but it did not badly affect the progress and direction of South African science. Science and scientific collaboration continued to grow under its major political phases amidst serious challenges. Despite internal conflict and boycott by the international scientific community, South Africa could move onto a stable and steady path of growth in science and collaboration under apartheid which is being carried on in the new South Africa. Collaborative research is encouraged at various levels of knowledge production and in science. The importance science and scientific development is gaining in today’s South Africa is remarkable.     

Mapping communication and collaboration in heterogeneous research networks

The aim of this mainly methodological paper is to present an approach for researching the triple helix of university-industry-government relations as a heterogeneous and multi-layered communication network. The layers included are: the formal scholarly communication in academic journals, the communication network based on project collaborations, and finally the communication of information over the 'virtual' network of web links. The approach is applied on typical 'Mode 2' fields such as biotechnology, while using a variety of data sources. We present some of the initial findings, which indicate the different structures and functions of the three layers of communication.     

Funded collaboration research in mathematics in China

Based on publications in mathematics of Chinese authors indexed in Chinese domestic and international databases, namely, the CNKI and the Web of Science, the current paper tries to explore impact of collaboration and funding support on academic productivity. Collaboration is classified into domestic and international collaboration, and domestic collaboration is further divided into within-institutional collaboration and cross-institutional collaboration. Regional performance in terms of collaboration and funding support has also been investigated. The results show that collaboration and funded support are highly skewed among Chinese regions. Beijing, Jiangsu, Shanghai, and Zhejiang are most active in collaboration and are the major winners of research funds. Zhejiang and Shaanxi perform in a contrast way: the former publishes mostly internationally whereas the latter mainly domestically. Compared with within-institutional collaboration, cross-institutional and international collaboration perform better in raising productivity and achieving research funds.     

Studying research collaboration using co-authorships

Scientific collaboration has become a major issue in science policy. The tremendous growth of collaboration among nations and research institutions witnessed during the last twenty years is a function of the internal dynamics of science as well as science policy initiatives. The need to survey and follow up the collaboration issue calls for statistical indicators sensitive enough to reveal the structure and change of collaborative networks. In this context, bibliometric analysis of co-authored scientific articles is one promising approach. This paper discusses the relationship between collaboration and co-authorship, the nature of bibliometric data, and exemplifies how they can be refined and used to analyse various aspects of collaboration.     

Contradicting incentives for research collaboration

This study describes the Danish publication award system (BFI), investigates whether its built-in incentives have had an effect on publication behavior at the University of Southern Denmark, and discusses the possible future implications on researcher incentives should universities wish to measure BFI on the individual level. We analyzed publication data from the university CRIS system (Pure) and from SciVal. Several studies indicate that co-authored scholarly journal articles attract more citations than single author articles. The reason for this are not clear, however, research collaboration across institutions and countries is commonly accepted in the research community and among university managements as one way of increasing the researcher’s and institution’s reputation and impact. The BFI system is designed to award scholarly publication activity at Danish universities, especially publication in international journals of high status. However, we find that the built-in incentives leave the researcher and his or her institution with a dilemma: If the researchers optimize their performance by forming author groups with external collaborators, the optimal way of doing so for the researchers is not the optimal way seen from the perspective of the university. Our analysis shows that the typical article has 6.5 authors, two of which are internal, and that this has remained stable since the introduction of the BFI. However, there is variation across the disciplines. While ‘the Arts and Humanities’ and ‘the Social Sciences’ seem to compose author groups in a way which does not optimize the performance of the institution, both ‘Health’ and ‘the Natural Sciences’ seem to optimize according to criteria other than those specified in the BFI.     

Dutch research groups: Output and collaboration

In the Netherlands the research worker in the universities on an average publishes in scientific journals three times as much as the scientist in industry. However, the universities differ considerably regarding their publications score per scientists; although this difference is diminishing. Furthermore this study shows per discipline the level of co-operation between Dutch and foreign research establishments. In general the level of co-operation with other research institutes has no positive effect on output. The analysis does show that the institutions with the largest financial support from the Research Council (an organization with the task of improving the output of research by means of fostering co-operation between research workers) are also the most productive ones.     

Scientific knowledge in South Africa: information trends,patterns and collaboration

Scientometrics - South Africa has made remarkable progress in science and technology. In the production of scientific information it is a leading country not only in sub-Saharan Africa but also in...     

Explaining international collaboration in global environmental change research

This paper maps the domain of earth and environmental sciences (EES) and investigates the relationship between cognitive problem structures and internationalisation patterns, drawing on the concepts of systemic versus cumulative global environmental change (GEC) and mutual task dependence in scientific fields. We find that scientific output concentration and internationalisation are significantly higher in the systemic GEC fields of Meteorology & Atmospheric Sciences and Oceanography than in the cumulative GEC fields Ecology and Water Resources. The relationship is explained by stronger mutual task dependence in systemic GEC fields. In contrast, the portion of co-authorships with developing, emerging and transition countries among all international publications is larger for Water Resources than for the three other fields, consistent with the most pressing needs for STI capacity development in these countries.     

Variation in research collaboration patterns across academic ranks

The ability to activate and manage effective collaborations is becoming an increasingly important criteria in policies on academic career advancement. The rise of such policies leads to development of indicators that permit measurement of the propensity to collaborate for academics of different ranks, and to examine the role of several variables in collaboration, first among these being the researchers’ disciplines. In this work we apply an innovative bibliometric approach based on individual propensity for collaboration to measure the differences in propensity across academic ranks, by discipline and for choice of collaboration forms—intramural, extramural domestic and international. The analysis is based on the scientific production of Italian academics for the period 2006–2010, totaling over 200,000 publications indexed in Web of Science. It shows that assistant professors register a propensity for intramural collaboration that is clearly greater than for professors of higher ranks. Vice versa, the higher ranks, but not quite so clearly, register greater propensity to collaborate at the international level.     

Publication productivity and collaboration of researchers in South Africa: new empirical evidence

Apart from a few bibliometrical studies the South African scientific system is a scantly researched area and asking for more empirical evidence. This empirical study of academics and researchers (n = 204) from a selected province of South Africa examines the interrelationship between publication productivity and collaboration, and the sectoral differences between higher education institutions and research institutes. The study highlights the specific context of the scientific system in South Africa with its characteristics features of productivity and collaboration and shows how they are structurally facilitated and hindered. Being a prominent contributor to the development of science in Africa the study offers some interesting findings.     

The relationship between research performance and international collaboration in chemistry

The number of internationally co-authored articles have significantly increased in recent years and now receive more citations than domestic works. Abramo et al. (Scientometrics 86:629–643, 2011b) investigated scholars in Italian universities and found a positive correlation between their research performance and degree of internationalization. This study uses a data set in chemistry to examine the robustness of the results presented by Abramo et al. (Scientometrics 86:629–643, 2011b) and the relationship between international collaboration and mobility among researchers. The results confirmed the robustness of the previous study and raised the possibility that the higher citation rate of international papers is not solely explained by the higher performance of researchers. Therefore, international research collaboration seems to exert some kind of “bonus” effect because of internationalization. The results also indicate that researchers who collaborate internationally accumulate science and technology human capital through collaboration. A positive relationship between the international mobility of researchers and their performance is also shown although the direction of the cause and effect is not yet clear.     

Impact of national size on research collaboration

It is generally assumed that there is a negative correlation between national scientific size and amount of international research collaboration: The larger the size is of the national scientific arena, the lesser the amount of international research collaboration. In this study, the collaboration pattern of 49 universities is analysed and a comparison is made between the Northern European and American universities in our sample. It was found that the American universities have more national and less international collaboration than the European ones. However, for the European universities there are no impact of national size although the countries differ much in scientific size. This deviation from the general trend indicates that the above-mentioned explanation is too simple and that national scientific size does not correlate negatively with the amount of international research collaboration without exceptions.