Gender gaps in international research collaboration: a bibliometric approach

This paper addresses gender differences in international research collaboration measured through international co-authorship. The study is based on a dataset consisting of 5600 Norwegian researchers and their publication output during a 3-year period (44,000 publications). Two different indicators are calculated. First, the share of researchers that have been involved in international collaboration as measured by co-authorship, and second, the share of their publications with international co-authorship. The study shows that the field of research is by far the most important factor influencing the propensity to collaborate internationally. There are large differences from humanities on the one hand, where international collaboration in terms of co-authorship is less common, to the natural sciences on the other, where such collaboration is very frequent. On an overall level, we find distinct gender differences in international research collaboration in Norway in the favour of men. However, men and women are not equally distributed across fields and there are relatively more female researchers in fields where the international collaboration rates generally are lower. When the data are analysed by scientific field, academic position, and publication productivity of the researchers, the gender differences in the propensity to collaborate with colleagues in other countries are minor only, and not statistically significant. Concerning gender inequality in science, the main challenge seems to be the lower productivity level of female researchers, which obviously hinders their academic career development. Differences in international collaboration are unlikely to be an important factor in this respect, at least not in the Norwegian research context analysed in this study.

     

Reasons for and developments in international scientific collaboration: does an Asia–Pacific research area exist from a bibliometric point of view?

This paper describes the different forms of and tries to give reasons for international scientific collaboration in general. It focuses on eleven countries in the Asia–Pacific region by evaluating their national research output with the help of bibliometric indicators in particular. Over two million journal articles published by these countries between 1998 and 2007 in ISI-listed periodicals are analyzed. Discipline-specific publication and citation profiles reveal national strengths and weaknesses in the different research domains. The exponential increase in publication output by China over the last few years is astonishing, but in terms of visibility, i.e. citation rates, China cannot keep up with leading science nations, remaining below the world average. A discipline-specific analysis shows that Chinese authors took an active part in more than a quarter of all articles and reviews published in the field of materials science in 2007, while their contribution to medical research is very low. Co-publication networks among the eleven countries are generated to observe the development of cooperation bonds in the region. Applying Salton’s measure of international collaboration strength, an above-average strengthening of scientific collaboration in the Asia–Pacific region can be observed.     

The unbalanced performance and regional differences in scientific and technological collaboration in the field of solar cells

This study attempts to explore collaborations in the field of solar cell science and technology, focusing on the productivity and citations of papers and patents at the global and country levels. This study finds that most papers and patents are collaborative efforts, however, the rate of collaboration is higher for papers. In particular, international collaboration is not common in patents. In terms of performance, international collaborations have shown the best performance overall if looking at trends that cover the 30 years from 1980 to 2009, but the performance of single-authored papers has been better in the more recent ten-year period, 2000–2009. At the country level, we found that most countries have higher rates of international collaboration with greater numbers in papers and patents. Asian countries such as Japan, Taiwan and India have significant citation performance with high ratios for domestic collaboration; the rates are even greater than the average ratio for international collaboration.     

Bibliometric study on vaccines (1990–1995) part I: Scientific production in Iberian-American countries

Analysis of scientific production is made in the domains of vaccines for the period 1990–1995, including eight Iberian-American countries. To attain the results, different indicators were applied such as: collaboration rate, activity index and representation techniques, using a cluster analysis and multidimensional scaling. Similarities between countries are represented according to their activity index in the subject field. Results show a discontinuity in the scientific production over the years, where each country has a peculiar behavior.     

Mapping of dental science research in India: a scientometric analysis of India’s research output, 1999–2008

The study examines India’s performance based on its publication output in dental sciences during 1999–2008, based on several parameters, including the country annual average growth rate, global publication share & rank among 25 most productive countries of the world, national publication output and impact in terms of average citations per paper, international collaboration output and share and contribution of major collaborative partners, contribution and impact of select top 25 Indian institutions and select top 15 most productive authors, patterns of communication in national and international journals and characteristics of its 45 high cited papers. The study uses 10 years (1999–2008) publications data in dental sciences of India and other countries drawn from Scopus international multidisciplinary bibliographical database.     

Bibliometric analysis of complementary and alternative medicine research over three decades

This study applies bibliometric analysis to investigate the quantity and citation impact of scientific papers in the field of complementary and alternative medicine (CAM). The data are collected from 19 CAM journals in the Science Citation Index Expanded (SCI-E) database during 1980–2009, and 17,002 papers are identified for analysis. The study analyzes the document types, geographical and institutional distribution of the authorship, including international scientific collaboration. This study suggests that the major type of document is original article. The CAM papers are mostly published by North America, East Asia, and European countries, of which publications authored in East Asia are cited most. Country-wise, major contributors of CAM papers are from USA, People’s Republic of China, India, England and Germany. India has the highest CPP value, attracting high attentions in CAM community. This article also finds that international co-authorship in the CAM field has increased rapidly during this period. In addition, internationally collaborated publications generate higher citation impact than papers published by authors from single country. Finally, the research identifies productive institutions in CAM, and China Medical University located in Taiwan is the most productive organization.     

International scientific and technological collaboration of China from 2004 to 2008: a perspective from paper and patent analysis

Since China adopted Open-Up and Reformed Policy for global collaboration, China’s science and technology have experienced an astounding growth. Papers and patents encompass valuable scientific and technological (S&T) information and collaborative efforts. This article studies China’s international S&T collaboration from the perspective of paper and patent analysis. The results show that China’s total papers and patents have continuously increased from 2004 to 2008, the papers and patents resulting from China’s international collaboration also present a steady growth. However, there is a decline in the share of international collaboration papers and patents with a certain range due to the rapid independent R&D. China’s international scientific collaboration (ISC) is broadly distributed over many countries, the USA being the most important ISC partners. China’s international technological collaboration (ITC) is mainly carried out with USA and Taiwan, and Taiwan has been the most significant ITC partner of when taking countries’ patent output into account. Besides, ISC shows a continuous raise of Chinese papers’ citation. Even the countries with a small amount of papers and ISC with China, exert a positive influence on the impact of citation of Chinese papers as well. However, ITC does not always play an active role in the improvement of citation impact of Chinese patents.     

The impact of collaboration on the technological performance of regions: time invariant or driven by life cycle dynamics?

Increasingly, collaboration between firms as well as science-industry interactions are being considered as important for technology development. Yet, few attempts have been made to analyze the contribution of collaboration, taking into account different stages of the technology life cycle. Our analysis, based on a panel of 197 regions in the EU-15 and Switzerland (time period 1978–2001), provides evidence that, in the field of biotechnology, science-industry collaboration contributes to better technological performance of regions both during the emerging phases (1978–1990) and the growth stages (1991–1999) of the life cycle. Collaboration between industrial partners also contributes to the technological performance of regions during the first phase but is less pronounced during later phases of the technology life cycle. Moreover, the analysis reveals that, as technologies develop over time, the impact of local collaboration is mitigated in favor of collaboration that has an international dimension. This holds true for both science-industry interactions and for collaboration between firms. In consequence, our findings underscore the relevance of incorporating life cycle dynamics (of technologies) when studying the nature and impact of collaboration on the technological performance of regions.     

The development trends of science in the CIS countries on the basis of some scientometric indicators

The article attempts to assess the results of the independent development of the CIS countries in the field of science over the period 1990–2009. The analysis of the numerous scientometric indicators reveals the decrease of the number of expert researchers and the significant decrease in the scientific and technical output. The article also provides the information about the dynamics of a set of indicators which allows to draw conclusions about the effectiveness of the research activity in the CIS countries.     

Collaboration in theoretical population genetics speciality

Analyses the growth of funded and collaborative research publications and authors as reflected in selected theoretical population genetics literature from 1956–60 to 1976–80. Indicates that the number of funded and collaborated publications has not proportionally increased along with the growth of total research publications and authors with time, but however, there is a strong correlation between the two. Indicates the extent of multi-authored research publications in different countries, and studies the growth of multi-authored publications from 1956–60 to 1976–80. Studies the impact of funding and collaboration on the productivity of authors over a period of time. Concludes that the authors who are more productive are generally found to be more collaborative and funded. The average productivity per author is observed to be larger in funded and collaborated authors subset and smaller in non-funded and non-collaborated authors subset, than the average productivity per author in the total authors subset in all the five block years studied. There is a systematic increase with time in the average productivity per author in the funded and collaborated authors subset. Studies the nature and type of collaborated research from 1956–60 to 1976–80, and the role of funding. Highlights the research priorities of few important countries in collabortive research. Indicates the collaboration linkages among various countries in transnational collaborative research. Concludes that with time, the focus of research is slowly shifting from internal collaration to domestic and international collaboration, supported by increasing funding from government agencies in theoretical population genetics research.     

Comparison and evaluation of Chinese research performance in the field of bioinformatics

Bioinformatics is an emerging and rapidly evolving discipline. The bioinformatics literature is growing exponentially. This paper aims to provide an integrated bibliometric study of the knowledge base of Chinese research community, based on the bibliometric information in the field of bioinformatics from SCI-Expanded database during the period of 2000–2005. It is found that China is productive in bioinformatics as far as publication activity in international journals is concerned. For comparative purpose, the results are benchmarked against the findings from five other major nations in the field of bioinformatics: USA, UK, Germany, Japan and India. In terms of collaboration profile, the findings imply that the collaborative scope of China has gradually transcended boundaries of organizations, regions and nations as well. Finally, further analyses on the citation share and some surrogate scientometric indicators show that the publications of Chinese authors suffer from a lowest international visibility among the six countries. Strikingly, Japan has achieved most remarkable impact of publication when compared to research effort devoted to bioinformatics amongst the six countries. The policy implication of the findings lies in that Chinese scientific community needs much work on improving the research impact and pays more attention to strengthening the academic linkages between China and worldwide nations, particularly scientifically advanced countries.     

International collaboration of three ‘giants’ with the G7 countries in emerging nanobiopharmaceuticals

Nanobiopharmaceuticals is a hopeful research domain from recent scientific advances with massive marketable potential. Although some researchers have studied international collaboration from some aspects, few articles are as comprehensive as this article to consider international cooperation from so many different aspects. We lay more emphasis on international collaboration in the field of nanobiopharmaceuticals involving China. Incremental citation impact values show that in order to move forward and improve the overall competitiveness in the field, China requires to carry out more international collaboration in the field, especially with USA, Germany, and England. Startlingly, multinational collaboration does not sway Chinese citation impact as much as we anticipate in the field. China has reached the first rank in the world in terms of publication amount per year in the field in 2009. Few papers about international collaboration compare small world phenomenon. We use small world quotient to find that it is important for Chinese international co-authors to strengthen to cultivate a cooperation networks in which a node’s partners are also buddies to each other.     

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

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’.     

Collaboration and cross-disciplinarity in autoimmune diseases

Collaboration and cross-disciplinarity are important features in autoimmune disease research. Taking co-authorship as an indicator for research collaboration, for selected European countries it was found that 91% to 99% of all publications are based on collaboration. International collaboration affects about 27% of all publications. Small countries like Sweden and Finland pursue international collaboration more intensively than larger countries like Germany or the UK. Different collaboration strategies were found for nationally co-authored papers, for instance, Germany seems to focus more on intra-departmental collaboration, while France and Italy have stronger inter-institutional links. About 54% of all publications are based on cross-disciplinary The term ‘cross-disciplinarity’ is used to highlight the fact that contributions from more than one discipline are made and required. This more general term is used—rather than the term ‘interdisciplinarity’—because it collaboration, which was found to be even more important in international collaboration. is hard or even impossible to distinguish interdisciplinary from multi-disciplinary work based on the data used. For a more detailed discussion of the terminology see e.g. Refs 1–5.     

Exploring the management information systems discipline: a scientometric study of ICIS, PACIS and ASAC

This paper examines the rapid growth of China in the field of nanotechnology and the rise of collaboration between China and the US in this emerging domain. Chinese scientific papers in nanotechnology are analyzed to indicate overall trends, leading fields and the most prolific institutions. Patterns of China–US nanotechnology paper co-authorship are examined over the period 1990–2009, with an analysis of how these patterns have changed over time. The paper combines bibliometric analysis and science mapping. We find rapid development in the number of China–US co-authored nanotechnology papers as well as structural changes in array of collaborative nanotechnology sub-fields. Implications for both China and the US of this evolving relationship are discussed.     

International collaboration development in nanotechnology: a perspective of patent network analysis

International collaboration has played an important role in the development of nanotechnology. Patents encompass valuable technological information and collaborative efforts. Thus, this paper examines international collaboration development in nanotechnology using patent network analysis. The results show that the number of international collaboration nanotechnology patents has increased steadily and the proportion of them of total nanotechnology patents has likewise exhibited an upward trend. USA has always been the most influential participant with largest number of international collaboration patents. Asian countries/regions have shown an obvious increase in the number of international collaboration patents. By contrast, there have shown a generally decline in European countries. More and more countries have become actively engaged in international collaboration in nanotechnology with increasingly closer relationships. Two styles of international collaboration exit: while USA, Germany, UK and Japan collaborate with a wide range of countries/regions; Spain, Israel, Russia, Singapore and Taiwan are more selective in their collaboration partners. Though International collaboration has yet to find global significance in terms of patent citation impacts, it has nevertheless been incremental in improving patent citation impacts for most of the top 20 countries/regions since 2004.     

The role of domestic journals in geographically-oriented disciplines: The case of Spanish journals on earth sciences

The role of domestic journals in disseminating research results in the filed of Earth Sciences in Spain is discussed. The analysis is based on bibliometric indicators of Spanish scientific production, as well as on the opinion of Spanish researchers in this field, obtained through a specially designed survey. A reasonable correspondence has been found between the results of bibliometric analysis and scientists' judgements. Results show that 69% of Spanish articles in Earth Sciences were published in Spanish journals during the period 1990–1994. Scientists use both national and international journals to communicate, their research results, although due to the nature of the discipline, geographically oriented and therefore mostly devoted to local problems, they use basically domestic journals. In terms of international visibility, although none of the Spanish journals in this field is covered by the SCI, most of them are covered by some of the most representative international databases in the field concerned. The study points out the importance of domestic journals in the field of Earth Sciences in Spain.     

Stocktaking scientific publication on bi-regional collaboration between Europe 28 and Latin America and the Caribbean

Mapping bi-regional scientific collaboration demands multiple approaches to obtain a picture as complete as possible. Usually, the first approach is the measuring of the number and typology of scientific co-publications in the most visible indexes of journals and publications covered by databases like Web of Science or Scopus, among others. This paper analyzes scientific publications listed by Web of Science (WoS), which comprises authors from the 28 EU countries and Latin American and Caribbean countries (EULAC) between 2005 and 2016. The following questions have been addressed: How are bi-regional scientific relations between EULAC countries reflected by international collaboration? What effects does this scientific collaboration have in smaller or emerging countries? Which area of knowledge has more international collaborations? The study highlights the existence of a growing global network of researchers from several countries that collaborate on their research. EULAC scientific collaboration cannot be understood in isolation from this global network.