Capturing Scholarly Communication in Southeast Asia

Abstract

One of the objectives of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) is to promote scientific and research collaboration in order to raise the level of competitiveness in Southeast Asia. Bibliometrics can play an important role in informing science and scholarship policy evaluation and recommendations in this region. Bibliometric researchers have been observing scholarly activities in this region since the 1980s. However, the number of scholarly publications in this region has been relatively low compared to the rest of the world. Most of these bibliometric studies focus on benchmarking research performance between these countries, although they vary in many regards, for instance, in the countries/regions of interest, data sources, and analytical techniques. Evaluation studies of collaboration within this region are evidently rare and mostly focus on collaborations with non-ASEAN countries. By connecting the results of these studies through different periods and methodological perspectives, this chapter discusses the challenges and knowledge gaps in this research area in order to identify potential research topics and approaches for future studies.