Göran Melin

Studying research collaboration using co-authorships

Scientific collaboration has become a major issue in science policy. The tremendous growth of collaboration among nations and research institutions witnessed during the last twenty years is a function of the internal dynamics of science as well as science policy initiatives. The need to survey and follow up the collaboration issue calls for statistical indicators sensitive enough to reveal the structure and change of collaborative networks. In this context, bibliometric analysis of co-authored scientific articles is one promising approach. This paper discusses the relationship between collaboration and co-authorship, the nature of bibliometric data, and exemplifies how they can be refined and used to analyse various aspects of collaboration.

The top eight percent: Development of approved and rejected applicants for a prestigious grant in Sweden

In the final round of a call for applications for one of Swedens most prestigious research grants, 40 relatively young and potentially promising researchers remained. Half were eventually approved; the other half were rejected. The differences between them in terms scientific merit were investigated. No particular differences were found. How did these two groups differ in terms of scientific development a few years later, with respect to publications, international co-authorships, further funding and spin-offs? Results show that the approved group has been more successful in many ways. A discussion is held regarding the effects of providing young promising researchers with sufficient funding, and the cost of failing to do so. Copyright , Beech Tree Publishing.

Impact of national size on research collaboration : A comparison between northern European and American Universities

It is generally assumed that there is a negative correlation between national scientific size and amount of international research collaboration: The larger the size is of the national scientific arena, the lesser the amount of international research collaboration. In this study, the collaboration pattern of 49 universities is analysed and a comparison is made between the Northern European and American universities in our sample. It was found that the American universities have more national and less international collaboration than the European ones. However, for the European universities there are no impact of national size although the countries differ much in scientific size. This deviation from the general trend indicates that the above-mentioned explanation is too simple and that national scientific size does not correlate negatively with the amount of international research collaboration without exceptions.

Hotel cosmopolitan: a bibliometric study of collaboration at some European universities

The collaborative pattern of all Nordic universities, as well as a few universities in the UK and the Netherlands, is analyzed using institutionally co-authored articles retrieved from Science Citation Index.™ The study shows that there are no major differences between universities of various size when it comes to the proportion of articles with internal, national, or international co-authorships. There are some country variations, but within each country, the differences among the universities are small, if any. When co-authorships were fractionalized according to the number of times a given university occurs among the addresses of an article, there were still no significant differences between universities of varying size. Since external collaboration, whether it is national or international, accounts for more than half of all articles produced by the universities, one is inclined to conclude that the universities function as a kind of cosmopolitan hotel housing nodes of scientific networks that are becoming increasingly international.

Research collaboration at Nordic universities

Scientific collaboration has become a major issue in science policy. The need to survey and follow up such collaboration calls for statistical indicators sensitive enough to reveal the structure and change of collaborative networks. Bibliometric analysis of co-authored scientific articles is one promising approach. This study presents data generated from a comprehensive analysis of some 20,000 articles produced by 22 Nordic universities (Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, Sweden) in 1993. The results show that scientific collaboration plays a key role for all universities, and that they collaborate with external institutions in just about the same extent. The inter-Nordic university network comprises about ten percent of all institutional collaborations. However, the amount of collaboration varies across fields, physics and medicine having a high degree of collaboration. The inter-Nordic network is of equal importance as the national network in physics and geosciences. Especially, when one looks at international collaboration outside the Nordic arena, the number of overlapping partners is quite low. This suggests that research specialization is the major force governing international contacts.

An exploratory study of the feature of Iranian co-authorships in biology, chemistry and physics

This paper investigates factors behind co-authorships between scientists in Iran and elsewhere. It also compares the Iranian pattern of collaboration with other countries. A questionnaire was sent out to Iranian scientists in fields of physics, chemistry, and biology who had published an internationally co-authored journal article during 2003. The results show that not all co-authored articles were the result of a collaborative project. Also, the main collaborative motives behind the co-authorships were identified and described. Among these, we could mention sharing laboratory devices, accessing knowledge, and increased efficiency of the study at hand. It is clear that emigrated Iranian scientists play an important role as collaborators and probably also as links to the international scientific community as a whole. Cultural factors mix with scientific and work related ones. Although the proportion of international co-authorships is lower than in most other countries, the collaborative pattern seems rather similar.

The networking university: A study of a Swedish University using institutional co-authorships as an indicator

This article examines the subject of research collaboration, and elaborates on this subject on an institutional rather than an individual level. An empirical case-study is presented; the research collaboration of Umeå University in Sweden, during the period 1991–1993 is investigated. Institutional co-authorships based on the addresses of the departments are used as an indicator of this collaboration. The results are separated into three levels: the local level, the national level, and the international level. It is obvious that the research collaboration is most extensive. Finally the universitys collaboration is discussed and a scheme is proposed with the purpose to understand research collaboration in a social as well as a cognitive context. The guiding terms here are access, visibility and attractiveness.

Equalization, growth and integration of science

A study of the production of scientific papers, co-authorships, and R&D-expenditures shows that science is becoming more equally distributed among the OECD-countries. Papers in the journalScience are more unequally distributed than papers inScience Citation Index as a whole or the distribution of R&D-investments. Scientific collaboration, is a major factor affecting the distribution of scientific papers.

Evaluation of Nordplus

Nordplus is one of the most widely known initiatives under the auspices of the Nordic Council of Ministers. For decades, Nordplus has provided a large number of people in the Nordic countries with opportunities to study or in other ways get culture and knowledge related experiences in another Nordic, and since 2008 Baltic, country. Nordplus has shifted in character and scope over the years, but can indeed be labelled a flagship programme and even a trademark for the Nordic Council of Ministers, andis perhaps its best recognised initiative of all. In this report, Technopolis Group (Technopolis Sweden and Technopolis Baltics) presents the results of an evaluation of the current programme period of Nordplus, 2012–2016.