Emerging ties: Factors underlying China’s co-publication patterns with Western European and North American research systems in three molecular life science subfields

Abstract

This paper analyses the changing geographic balance in China's international co-publications in general and in three molecular life science subfields in particular. No support is found for the expectation that intensive, designated institutional support for research collaboration in the form of joint laboratories has a positive impact on the number of co-publications at the systemic level. The size of partner research systems, and since the turn of the century the relative size of overseas Chinese scientific communities in various partner countries do help to explain the observed geographic variations in the share of China's international co-publications. The paper concludes by discussing some of the potential factors underlying the perceived change in the dynamics of international co-publication behavior of mainland Chinese scientists since the turn of the century.

The internationalisation of public sector research through international joint laboratories

“…The literature on the international activities of PROs is scarce and despite their increase in the last decade, the establishment of international joint laboratories in both developed and developing countries has not yet been studied with the exception of two case studies of single joint laboratories in China (Bonnema et al, 2006;Grumbach, 2007) and an analysis of their impact on international collaboration in the Chinese system (Jonkers, 2009).…”

Diaspora and Transnationalism : Concepts, Theories and Methods

“…In relative terms, the importance of North American research systems as collaborative partners (measured in terms of the share of China's copublications) has increased at the expense of Western European systems. This trend is expected to be related in part to the increasing importance of transnational research collaboration (Jonkers 2009). …”

“…Of greater interest to the discussion in this chapter is the significantly positive independent correlation between the proxy used to gauge visibility of the overseas Chinese scientific community in respective partner countries (X 2 ) and the number of international co-publications (Jonkers 2010). The relationships between these indicators are explored in more depth in a recent paper using cross-panel time series analyses (Jonkers 2009). These analyses provide an indication of the relative increase in importance of transnational research collaboration between the Chinese research system and its main partner systems.…”

China and Europe networks in health: an empirical analysis on co-publications

“…They are the main tool used to diffuse knowledge and to enable the process of scientific progress (Braun, 2004). Consequently, despite some limitations (Jonkers, 2009), co-authorships can be considered "one of the most tangible and well documented forms of scientific collaboration" [Glänzel and Schubert, (2004), p.257] and are used in numerous studies analysing national and international research networks (Jonkers, 2009;Luukonen et al, 1993;Adams and Loach, 2015;Endenich and Trapp, 2015, to cite some). Such links tend not only to increase with time, but also to define stable and persistent networks among researchers and countries (Acedo et al, 2006;Uddin et al, 2012).…”