Spatial Structure of National and International Scientific Collaboration in the Brazilian Cerrado Research

Abstract

The number of authors in papers has increased over the years, indicating collaborative trends in Science and Technology. Besides, scientific collaboration is structured at different spatial scales, for example, within or between institutions in the same country or among countries. Here, we evaluate the scientific collaboration patterns at national and international levels in the Cerrado research. We searched all papers about the Cerrado published between 1945 and 2017 in the Web of Science database. We performed network analyses using pairwise distance matrices to create national and international collaboration networks. We also used spatial correlograms to test the effect of geographic distance on scientific collaboration. The number of papers increased over the years (rs = 0.96), where papers with 3-5 authors had the highest growth rate (rs = 0.96). Moreover, authors from geographically closer institutions tend to collaborate more at the national level, while we found no geographic effect on international collaboration. These results show that Brazilian scientists studying the Cerrado have collaborated more over the years regardless of distance, although locally, scientists are still more likely to work with scientists of close institutions within the biome. This collaboration tendency may be associated with the need in science to deal with more complex and multidisciplinary issues, where collaborative studies promote a greater scientific and social impact.