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

Abstract

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 ISIlisted 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.

Global performance of traditional Chinese medicine over three decades

“…citation rates, China could not catch up with those countries with more advanced scientific development. Therefore, its scientific performance remains below the world average (Haustein et al 2011), which was in conformity with the results in this study. Among the top eight prodigious producers of TCM papers, England has the highest As to the distributions of papers in three TCM subfields, being consistent with anterior results of geographical distribution, Asian countries and regions pay more attentions to Chinese medicine.…”

Higher education research in Hong Kong, Japan, China, and Malaysia: exploring research community cohesion and the integration of thematic approaches

“…To do this, publications in international specialized higher education journals authored by researchers based in selected Asian countries are analyzed. Scientometric methods are used to assess knowledge flows represented in publication data to map research communities (see Budd and Magnuson 2010;Haustein et al 2011) and to assess the extent to which teaching and learning and policy approaches are linked. The analysis draws on publications counts, and co-authorship and cross-citation network analysis using a thematic approach.…”

Population genetic structure of blue-spotted maskray Neotrygon kuhlii and two other Indo-West Pacific stingray species (Myliobatiformes: Dasyatidae), inferred from size-polymorphic intron markers

“…This is particularly true for developing nations in the central Indo-West Pacific region, where marine species richness is highest (Bellwood and Meyer, 2009;Briggs, 2005), human pressure is strong (Sadovy, 2005), management is poor (Pauly, 1994), and science is weaker than in other regions in the Indo-Pacific (Haustein et al, 2011;Meijaard, 2011). The low fecundity and slow maturation of sharks and rays (elasmobranchs), in particular, make them highly vulnerable to overfishing.…”