Mapping world scientific collaboration: Authors, institutions, and countries

Abstract

International collaboration is being heralded as the hallmark of contemporary scientific production. Yet little quantitative evidence has portrayed the landscape and trends of such collaboration. To this end, 14,000,000 documents indexed in Thomson Reuters's Web of Science (WoS) were studied to provide a state-of-the-art description of scientific collaborations across the world. The results indicate that the number of authors in the largest research teams have not significantly grown during the past decade; however, the number of smaller research teams has seen significant increases in growth. In terms of composition, the largest teams have become more diverse than the latter teams and tend more toward interinstitutional and international collaboration. Investigating the size of teams showed large variation between fields. Mapping scientific cooperation at the country level reveals that Western countries situated at the core of the map are extensively cooperating with each other. High-impact institutions are significantly more collaborative than others. This work should inform policy makers, administrators, and those interested in the progression of scientific collaboration.

A bibliometric-based evaluation on environmental research in the Arab world

“…The USA was in the second position in terms of collaboration with Arab world. As the most contributor in scientific research at global level, USA sustains to be a major contributor in the scientific collaborations (Gazni et al 2012). Germany and UK were also among the top collaborators in research with Arab world.…”

Travel bans and scientific mobility: utility of asymmetry and affinity indexes to inform science policy

“…Collaboration in science highlighted increased partnerships between scientific advanced and emergent countries in terms of co-authoring scientific papers (Adams 2013), as well as at the global level (Wagner et al 2015). That translates in strong benefits for participating countries (Glänzel 2001) and institutions (Gazni et al 2012) in terms of citations. Collaboration for mutual benefit has also gained increasing acceptance, with ''partner'' selection becoming a strategic priority to enhance one's own production (Chinchilla-Rodríguez et al 2018).…”

Which factors help authors produce the highest impact research? Collaboration, journal and document properties

“…Multi-author research has become more common (Gazni, Sugimoto, & Didegah, 2012;Persson, Glänzel, & Danell, 2004) and receives more citations than does solo research (Gazni & Didegah, 2010;Sooryamoorthy, 2009; Leimu & Koricheva, 2005a&b). However, a few studies have found no correlation between more authors and increased citations (Bornmann, Schier, Marx, & Daniel, 2012;Haslam et al, 2008).…”