Technological collaboration patterns in solar cell industry based on patent inventors and assignees analysis

This study examines technological collaboration in the solar cell industry using the information of patent assignees and inventors as defined by the United States Patent and Trademark Office. Three different collaborative types, namely local (same city), domestic (different cities of the same country), and international collaboration, are discussed. The general status of solar cell patent collaborations, transforming trends of collaborative patterns, average numbers of assignees and inventors for three collaborative types, and international collaboration countries are studied. It is found that co-invented patents and co-assigned patents have both increased in numbers during the four decades studied, and that collaboration between technology owners is very low while the collaboration between inventors is active. Domestic collaboration is the main collaborative pattern for both assignee collaboration and inventor collaboration. The other two collaborative types show contrary trends: international collaboration has slowly risen in the past decades while local collaboration has dwindled. The US has the largest number of internationally collaborative patents worldwide, though such patents account for a low portion of total US patents. In contrast, China has a small total number of patents and internationally collaborative patents, however its international collaborative shares are higher. The international collaboration patents among countries are few. A co-assigned patent analysis indicates that the main international cooperation partner of the United States is Japan. Based on an international co-invented patent analysis, the main international collaboration partners of the United States are Britain, Japan, and Germany; and the United States is also the most important collaboration partner of China.     

International research collaborations of ASEAN Nations in economics, 1979–2010

This study examines the research performance and international research collaborations (IRC) of ASEAN nations in the area of economics. Over the last 3 decades international collaborated papers have increased in the region, while locally-co-authored papers have declined. Singapore towered among ASEAN nations in research efficiency based on geographical area, population and GDP. Vietnam performed relatively better in research efficiency than research productivity (number of papers produced), while Indonesia performed poorly. Overall, internationally co-authored papers were cited twice as often as locally authored papers except that both The Philippines and Indonesia exhibited almost no difference in how their local and internationally co-authored papers were cited. The study also examined IRC from the perspective of social networks. Centrality had a strong correlation with research performance; however, vertex tie-strength (a result of repeat collaboration) showed maximum correlation with research performance. While Malaysia emerged as the nation with the highest betweenness centrality or ‘bridging’ power, the US emerged as the most favoured international partner of ASEAN nations. However, collaboration between ASEAN countries accounted for just 4 % of all international collaborations. Increased academic mobility and more joint scientific works are suggestions to consider to boost educational co-operation among the ASEAN nations.     

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.     

Scientific production and citation impact: a bibliometric analysis in acupuncture over three decades

Acupuncture, the most important nonpharmacological therapy in traditional Chinese medicine, has attracted significant attention since its introduction to the Western world. This study employs bibliometric analysis to examine the profile of publication activity related to it. The data are retrieved from the database of Science Citation Index Expanded during 1980–2009, and 7,592 papers are identified for analysis. This study finds that almost 20 % of papers are published in CAM journals, and the average cited times per acupuncture paper is 8.69. While the most cited article has been cited 2,109 times, however, 38.15 % of total publications have never been cited. Europe has the largest amount of authored papers with high h-index values; the USA has the largest number of publications on and citations of acupuncture based on country distribution, and this has continued as a significant rising trend. The proportion of collaborative papers shows this upward trend on the worldwide scale while the percentage shares of national collaborations are the highest. The USA produces the most international collaborative documents, although South Korea occupies the highest percentage figure for international collaborative papers. International collaborative papers are the most frequently cited. The average number of authors per paper is 3.69 in the top eight countries/regions. Papers contributed by South Korea are authored by the most people. International collaboration papers are authored by more people, except in Taiwan. South Korea’s Kyung Hee University is ranked first in terms of number of papers while Harvard University in the USA accounts for the largest proportion of citations. The University of Exeter, Harvard University and Karolinska Institute have the highest h-index values.     

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 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.     

International collaboration in science: Participation by the Asian giants

Science in the last few years has become increasingly global and collaborative. The number of internationally coauthored papers has been increasing steadily. We have counted internationally jointly authored papers involving authors from the advanced countries and the Third World countries, usingSCI 1991. We have looked at the number of papers resulting from collaboration among authors residing in the countries of the North (e.g. EC and OECD countries), authors residing in the South (e.g. India and Bangladesh, Mexico and Brazil, China and Pakistan) and papers resulting from collaboration between authors residing in the countries of the South and the North (e.g. India and UK, China and USA). Despite its late start, China has published many more collaborative papers with most Asian countries and the advanced countries of the West except the UK than India — confirming the effectiveness of the open door policy of post-Mao China. Both India and China collaborate with USA much more often in physics than in other areas, followed by clinical medicine. However, India collaborates more with USA in chemistry than China. In Indo-US and Sino-US collaborations, collaborating institutions are mostly universities and institutes of higher learning in India and USA, whereas in China several institutions under the Academies also take part. The percentage of collaborative papers involving authors from India is even smaller than the percentage of journal articles originating from India. In general, papers resulting from international collaboration appear in better journals and are cited more often than papers that are the outcome of local research.Paper presented at the Fourth International Conference on Bibliometrics, Informetrics and Scientometrics in Berlin (Germany), September 11–15, 1993.     

International Collaboration in Science in India and its Impact on Institutional Performance

In this paper, our objective is to delineate some of the problems that could arise in using research output for performance evaluation. Research performance in terms of the Impact Factor (IF) of papers, say of scientific institutions in a country, could depend critically on coauthored papers in a situation where internationally co-authored papers are known to have significantly different (higher) impact factors as compared to purely indigenous papers. Thus, international collaboration not only serves to increase the overall output of research papers of an institution, the contribution of such papers to the average Impact Factor of the institutional output could also be disproportionately high. To quantify this effect, an index of gain in impact through foreign collaboration (GIFCOL) is defined such that it ensures comparability between institutions with differing proportions of collaborative output. A case study of major Indian institutions is undertaken, where Cluster Analysis is used to distinguish between intrinsically high performance institutions and those that gain disproportionately in terms of perceived quality of their output as a result of international collaboration. This revised version was published online in June 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

International collaboration in LIS: global trends and networks at the country and institution level

In order to gain a deeper understanding of the international collaboration of global library and information science (LIS), the present paper investigated the trends, networks as well as core groups of the international collaboration in LIS at the country and institution levels by combining bibliometric analysis and social network analysis. In this study, a total of 8,570 papers from 15 core journals during the period of 2000–2011 were collected. The results indicate that 66 % of papers are joint publications in global LIS. Two-country papers and two-institution papers are the two primary collaboration patterns in the international collaboration at the country and institution levels respectively. Through social network analysis, it is observed that the country collaboration network has reached a certain degree of maturity over the past 12 years in global LIS, while the international institution collaboration network has not yet matured and is made up of dozens of components. In the country collaboration network, the position of USA and UK are remarkable. Although the USA is positioned at the center of the network, institutions located in the USA are more inclined to have collaboration within domestic, suggesting institutions in the USA have a low tendency towards international collaboration. In the institution collaboration network, it is found that two groups located in the USA and Europe respectively. The results of the institution collaboration network also reveal that Katholieke Univ Leuven has not only the largest collaboration breadth, but also strong capabilities to control communication within the international institution collaboration network.     

Evolving collaboration networks in Scientometrics in 1978–2010: a micro–macro analysis

This paper reports first results on the interplay of different levels of the science system. Specifically, we would like to understand if and how collaborations at the author (micro) level impact collaboration patterns among institutions (meso) and countries (macro). All 2,541 papers (articles, proceedings papers, and reviews) published in the international journal Scientometrics from 1978–2010 are analyzed and visualized across the different levels and the evolving collaboration networks are animated over time. Studying the three levels in isolation we gain a number of insights: (1) USA, Belgium, and England dominated the publications in Scientometrics throughout the 33-year period, while the Netherlands and Spain were the subdominant countries; (2) the number of institutions and authors increased over time, yet the average number of papers per institution grew slowly and the average number of papers per author decreased in recent years; (3) a few key institutions, including Univ Sussex, KHBO, Katholieke Univ Leuven, Hungarian Acad Sci, and Leiden Univ, have a high centrality and betweenness, acting as gatekeepers in the collaboration network; (4) early key authors (Lancaster FW, Braun T, Courtial JP, Narin F, or VanRaan AFJ) have been replaced by current prolific authors (such as Rousseau R or Moed HF). Comparing results across the three levels reveals that results from one level might propagate to the next level, e.g., top rankings of a few key single authors can not only have a major impact on the ranking of their institution but also lead to a dominance of their country at the country level; movement of prolific authors among institutions can lead to major structural changes in the institution networks. To our knowledge, this is the most comprehensive and the only multi-level study of Scientometrics conducted to date.     

Relationship between international collaboration papers and their citations from an economic perspective

This paper analyzes the relationship among international collaboration, number of papers and number of citations from an economic perspective. It analyzes the number of international collaboration papers and their citations according to different international economic collaboration types, the number of countries at different economic levels, and the economic situations of first or corresponding authors. This study analyzes international collaboration papers listed in Web of Science from 2011 to 2015, published in the field of Public, Environmental and Occupational Health. According to different international collaboration types, results show that the subset of international collaboration with the same economic level accounts for the highest percentage, especially the type of H&H, and there are significant differences in average citations among different collaboration types, the type of H&M&L has the highest value (11.21?±?15.72). According to the number of countries at different economic levels, results show that papers published by ≥?3 countries account for the highest percentage most of the time in different collaboration types. In general, there are positive correlations between the number of countries and citations, but there are no significant differences according to the number of low income countries in different types except H&M&L. According to economic situations of first or corresponding authors, results show that papers initiated by high income countries always account for the highest percentage over past 5 years, and there are positive correlations between the economic situations of first or corresponding authors and citations in different types except H&M. (H: high income countries, M: middle income countries, L: low income countries).     

A study of collaboration in laser science and technology

An analysis of 3174 papers published in journals in the field of laserscience and technology indicate that only 401 papers were single authoredand the rest 2773 were co-authored papers. Of the 2773 papers, only 687 werewritten in local (inter-departmental), domestic (inter-institutional) andinternational collaboration. As reflected by the values of collaborative coefficientand co-authorship index, it is observed that the proportion of mega-authoredpapers for Japan, France, Italy, and the Netherlands was more, while for Canada,China, and Australia the proportion of single authored papers was more. Mostof the collaborative papers had bilateral domestic and international collaboration.Domestic collaborations were higher for USA, Japan, France and Australia,while international collaboration was higher for China, Israel, the Netherlands,and Switzerland. This revised version was published online in June 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Product and process innovation in manufacturing firms: a 30-year bibliometric analysis

In recent decades, internationalization of research activities has increased, as demonstrated by the phenomena of international scientific collaboration and international mobility of researchers. This paper investigates whether the international scientific collaboration is explained by researchers’ motivation as well as their international migration. Using metadata from papers published in Nature and Science from 1989 to 2009, count data estimation was conducted. The results illustrate those researchers’ international migration and motivation, shown by both synergy and difference effects between countries, explain international collaboration. This implies that international co-authorship in recent decades has been based on researchers’ motivation as well as their networking. The positive result for synergy effects also means that pairs of countries with rich research environments tended to have more international collaboration, which may lead to the convergence of qualified research output in advanced scientific countries. Our findings also support the conclusion that researchers move to countries with better research environments, but networks created through international collaboration are not a factor in international migration. The relationship between international mobility and collaboration is confirmed as going in one direction, from mobility to collaboration.     

South–South research collaboration of countries in the Southern African Development Community (SADC)

This study investigates South–South collaboration in research, and specifically collaboration among the 15 countries of the Southern African Development Community (SADC) as well as between the SADC and the rest of Africa. It was found that only 3% of SADC papers during 2005–2008 were jointly authored by researchers from two or more SADC countries (intra-regional collaboration), and only 5% of SADC papers were jointly authored with researchers from African countries outside the SADC (continental collaboration). In contrast, 47% of SADC papers were co-authored with scientists from high-income countries. The few instances of intra-regional and continental collaboration in the SADC are largely the product of North–South collaboration. Authors from high-income countries are included in 60% of intra-regional co-authored papers and in 59% of continental co-authored papers. Moreover, between 2005 and 2008, South Africa produced 81% of all SADC papers and 78% of all intra-regional co-authored papers. This implies that there is a highly unbalanced and unequal partnership that can best be described as a variant of North–South collaboration with the scientific giant in the South taking on the role of the ‘political North’. As a consequence, guidelines for successful North–South collaborations should be extended to include South–South collaborations that comprise highly unequal partners, as is the case between South Africa and the other SADC countries.     

Are highly cited papers more international?

Several bibliometric studies have shown that international or multicountry papers are generally more cited than domestic or single country papers. Does this also hold for the most cited papers? In this study, the citation impact of domestic versus international papers is analyzed by comparing the share of international papers among the hundred most cited papers in four research specialities, from three universities, four cities and two countries. It is concluded that international papers are not well represented among high impact papers in research specialities, but dominate highly cited papers from small countries, and from cities and institutions within them. The share of international papers among highly cited papers is considerably higher during 2001–2008 compared to earlier years for institutions, cities and countries, but somewhat less for two of the research fields and slightly higher for the other two. Above all, domestic papers from the USA comprise about half of the highly cited papers in the research specialities.     

Research and partnership in studies of sugarcane using molecular markers: a scientometric approach

In this study, we applied scientometric methods and performed a science mapping analysis to investigate and describe the application of molecular markers in genetic studies for sugarcane. We analyzed 344 papers retrieved from Web of Science Thomson Reuters database, considering the time frame from 1974 to 2017, allowing the analysis of the produced scientific knowledge, temporal trends and research partnership in the subject. To our knowledge, a scientometric evaluation of the use of molecular markers for genetic studies in sugarcane has not yet been reported. Our main finding shows that dominant markers are more commonly used than co-dominant markers, and that when co-dominant markers are applied, most of the retrieved information is underexploited, due to lack of knowledge for the use of dosage information. Our results also show that despite the development of high-throughput sequencing technologies, for sugarcane only 13.33% of the studies reported the use of more than 1000 markers. We also found connectivity among researchers and institutions publishing worldwide, but only few authors represented a bridge between different research groups. Thus, the international research partnership is still low. Our findings show dominance in country publication. Six countries (India, Brazil, USA, Australia, China, and France) were responsible for 80% of the published papers and received most citations. We suggest special reinforcement in building international partnership, since collaborations occur mostly within countries. International collaboration can improve research performance and eventually lead to a better exploitation and more development of knowledge for sugarcane.

     

Characteristics of research in China assessed with Essential Science Indicators

To provide an overview of the characteristics of research in China, a bibliometric evaluation of highly cited papers with high-level representation was conducted during the period from 1999 to 2009 based on the Essential Science Indicators (ESI) database. A comprehensive assessment covered overall performance, journals, subject categories, internationally collaborative countries, national inter-institutionally collaborative institutions, and most-cited papers in 22 scientific fields. China saw a strong growth in scientific publications in the last decade, to some extent due to increasing research and development expenditure. China has been more active in ESI fields of chemistry and physics, but more excellent in materials science, engineering and mathematics. Most publications were concerned with the common Science Citation Index subject categories of multidisciplinary chemistry, multidisciplinary materials and science, and physical chemistry. About one half China’s ESC papers were internationally collaborative and the eight major industrialized countries (the USA, Germany, the UK, Japan, France, Canada, Russia, and Italy) played a prominent role in scientific collaboration with China, especially the USA. The Chinese Academy of Sciences took the leading position of institutions with many branches. The “985 Project” stimulated the most productive institutions for academic research with a huge funding injection and the universities in Hong Kong showed good scientific performance. The citation impact of internationally collaborative papers differed among fields and international collaborations made positive contributions to academic research in China.     

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.

     

Using detailed maps of science to identify potential collaborations

Research on the effects of collaboration in scientific research has been increasing in recent years. A variety of studies have been done at the institution and country level, many with an eye toward policy implications. However, the question of how to identify the most fruitful targets for future collaboration in high-performing areas of science has not been addressed. This paper presents a method for identifying targets for future collaboration between two institutions. The utility of the method is shown in two different applications: identifying specific potential collaborations at the author level between two institutions, and generating an index that can be used for strategic planning purposes. Identification of these potential collaborations is based on finding authors that belong to the same small paper-level community (or cluster of papers), using a map of science and technology containing nearly 1 million papers organized into 117,435 communities. The map used here is also unique in that it is the first map to combine the ISI Proceedings database with the Science and Social Science Indexes at the paper level.     

Mapping research collaborations in the business and management field in Malaysia, 1980–2010

This paper examines research collaborations in the field of business and management in Malaysia, a fast-developing economy in Southeast Asia. The country aims to become a developed nation by the year 2020, guided by its well-charted Wawasan 2020 or Vision 2020 program. Research and development are important agenda items within this program. Rarely, however, have studies investigated the research collaborations of researchers based in Malaysia from the network perspective. After a manual author disambiguation process, we examined the network of 285 business and management researchers at the individual, institutional, and international levels. Author collaborations per paper almost doubled between 2001 and 2010 compared to the period 1980–1990. The popularity of researchers and the strength and diversity of their ties with other researchers had significant effects on their research performance. Furthermore, geographical proximity still mattered in intra-national collaborations. Malaysian institutions more often collaborated intra-institutionally or with foreign partners than with other institutions within Malaysia. The country’s five research universities are among the top-most productive of all institutions in Malaysia. Malaysia’s top international partners are all developed countries, including the US, Australia, Japan, the UK, and Canada. Surprisingly, Malaysia has had relatively little collaboration with ASEAN nations, of which it is a prominent member and which has an important agenda of educational cooperation within its member states. Internationally co-authored articles have been cited almost three times more than locally co-authored articles. Based on these results, we suggest an effective co-authorship strategy.