Diagnosing “Collaborative Culture” Of Biomedical Science in South Korea: Misoriented Knowledge, Competition, and Failing Collaboration

Abstract

In this article, the authors review collaborations in the emerging biomedical sciences in South Korea. At the global level, several studies have made substantial contributions to the understanding of the underlying structure of collaboration networks across countries. Despite the increase in international collaborations, researchers have rarely paid attention to the structural pattern of internal collaboration among individual actors that reflects culturally embedded characteristics in East Asia. To fill this gap, this study explores research collaboration in South Korea. In this study, the “collaborative culture” is interpreted and assessed through collaborative patterns in the network of important scientific actors and their conduct subject to reproduction. By applying a social network analysis approach, the authors visualize such attributes of network relations and discuss how to deal with ethical issues that are vital to sustainable scientific collaboration.

Keywords:

• scientific collaboration
• social network analysis
• stem cell
• biomedical research

Acknowledgments

The authors thank Drs. Margaret Sleeboom-Faulkner and Isamel Rafols for their advice on improving this research. We also thank anonymous reviewers and the editor for their helpful comments. Finally, we are grateful to Professor Youngchan Bae for providing the recent network data in the National Technical Information Service (NTIS) as part of a consulting scheme.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Leo Kim

Leo Kim is the CEO of Ars Praxia, a consulting company that specializes in social network and semantic network analysis. His research interests lie at the interaction of actors, strategies, narratives, and knowledge, especially in the public sphere of science and in developing the method of semantic network analysis and big data processing for pragmatic applications. He has published articles related to these topics in a number of international journals.

Han Woo Park

Han Woo Park conducts research on social networks and the role of communication in scientific, technical, and innovative activities. He is full professor in the Department of Media and Communication, the Interdisciplinary Program of East Asian Cultural Studies, and the Interdisciplinary Program of Digital Convergence Business at Yeungnam University, South Korea. He has been a research associate at the Royal Netherlands Academy and a visiting scholar at the Oxford Internet Institute. He is currently the director of the Cyber Emotions Research Institute and World Association for Triple Helix and Future Strategy Studies (WATEF, formerly, Asia Triple Helix Society). He has founded a prestigious conference on Triple Helix and Network Sciences in Asia, called DISC (Daegu Gyeongbuk International Social Network Conference, http://asia-triplehelix.org).