International collaboration in science: Participation by the Asian giants

Abstract

Science in the last few years has become increasingly global and collaborative. The number of internationally coauthored papers has been increasing steadily. We have counted internationally jointly authored papers involving authors from the advanced countries and the Third World countries, usingSCI 1991. We have looked at the number of papers resulting from collaboration among authors residing in the countries of the North (e.g. EC and OECD countries), authors residing in the South (e.g. India and Bangladesh, Mexico and Brazil, China and Pakistan) and papers resulting from collaboration between authors residing in the countries of the South and the North (e.g. India and UK, China and USA). Despite its late start, China has published many more collaborative papers with most Asian countries and the advanced countries of the West except the UK than India — confirming the effectiveness of the open door policy of post-Mao China. Both India and China collaborate with USA much more often in physics than in other areas, followed by clinical medicine. However, India collaborates more with USA in chemistry than China. In Indo-US and Sino-US collaborations, collaborating institutions are mostly universities and institutes of higher learning in India and USA, whereas in China several institutions under the Academies also take part. The percentage of collaborative papers involving authors from India is even smaller than the percentage of journal articles originating from India. In general, papers resulting from international collaboration appear in better journals and are cited more often than papers that are the outcome of local research.