International Collaboration in Science and the Formation of a Core Group

[Loet Leydesdorff]

International  <http://www.leydesdorff.net/cswagner07/index.htm>
Collaboration in Science and the Formation of a Core Group
Journal of Informetrics (forthcoming)

International collaboration as measured by co-authorship relations on
refereed papers grew linearly from 1990 to 2005 in terms of the number of
papers, but exponentially in terms of the number of international addresses.
This confirms Persson et al.'s (2004) hypothesis of an inflation in
international collaboration.  Patterns in international collaboration in
science can be considered as network effects, since there is no political
institution mediating relationships at that level except for the initiatives
of the European Commission. Science at the international level shares
features with other complex adaptive systems whose order arises from the
interactions of hundreds of agents pursuing self-interested strategies.
During the period 2000-2005, the network of global collaborations appears to
have reinforced the formation of a core group of fourteen most cooperative
countries. This core group can be expected to use knowledge from the global
network with great efficiency, since these countries have strong national
systems.  Countries at the periphery may be disadvantaged by the increased
strength of the core.

pdf-version
<http://users.fmg.uva.nl/lleydesdorff/cswagner07/globalisation.pdf> 
 
  _____  

Loet Leydesdorff 
Amsterdam School of Communications Research (ASCoR)
Kloveniersburgwal 48, 1012 CX Amsterdam
 <mailto:loet at leydesdorff.net> loet at leydesdorff.net ;
<http://www.leydesdorff.net/> http://www.leydesdorff.net/ 

Caroline S. Wagner
SRI International 
Arlington, Virginia, 22209, USA 
 <mailto:caroline.wagner at sri.com> caroline.wagner at sri.com
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