Analysis of the Spatial Dynamics of Intra- v.s. Inter-Research Collaborations across Countries

The purpose of this paper is to analyse the evolutionary pattern of international research collaborations. Using publication data from 1997 to 2012, this study decomposes international collaborations into two complementary types, intra-collaboration (within the same geographical area) and inter-collaboration (across different geographical areas). Our results show that the geographical concentration of international research collaborations is reducing. The formation of new network structure of international research collaborations is driven by the increase of inter-research collaborations of countries across different geographical areas rather than intracollaborations of countries within the same geographical area. Conference Topic International collaboration Introduction Scientific collaborations have been widely acknowledged to be efficient in managing time and labour in research labs (Coccia, 2014; Solla Price & Beaver, 1966), improving research quality (Presser, 1980; Narin et al., 1991; Katz & Hicks, 1997) and spurring the breakthroughs of scientific research for supporting competitiveness (Coccia, 2012). A number of factors have contributed to the continuous increase of international research collaborations and co-authored papers (Beaver & Rosen, 1978; Frame & Carpenter, 1979; Katz & Martin, 1997). Along with the steady rise of international scientific collaborations, a better understanding on the structure of the global research network across geo-economic areas and its evolutionary pattern are needed for scholars and policy makers. The high heterogeneity across countries – in terms of size, scientific capacity of the national system of innovation, etc. – generates a variety of patterns of the international research collaborations (Melin, 1999; Narin et al., 1991; Ozcan & Islam, 2014). A main issue in economics of science is to determine how and to which extent countries are engaged in international research collaborations so as to understand the behaviour of knowledge flows and to design research policies for improving the scientific research production which will in turn to enhance national competitiveness. Luukkonen et al. (1992) maintain that the map of collaborative connections between countries corresponds to a geographical map. Frame et al. (1977, p. 502), considering data of 1973, claim that: “the production of mainstream science is more heavily concentrated in the hands of a few countries”. Hoekman et al. (2010), using data on co-publications in European countries, show that research collaborations are geographically localized and despite a research heterogeneity in European countries in terms of research collaboration patterns, there 1 Mario Coccia gratefully acknowledges financial support from United Nations University -The Maastricht Economic and Social Research Institute on Innovation and Technology (Contract ID 606U U-04 76) where this joint research was conducted while he was a visiting researcher.