Research collaboration across higher education systems: maturity, language use, and regional differences

Abstract

This study analyzed whether research collaboration patterns differ across higher education systems based on maturity of the systems, their language, and their geographical region. This study found that collaboration patterns differ across higher education systems: academics in developed systems are more collaborative than their colleagues in developing systems; academics in English-speaking countries are no more collaborative than their colleagues in non-English speaking countries; and academics in European countries are more collaborative internationally than their colleagues in non-European countries. In addition, it was found that publication is not associated with collaboration, either domestically or internationally. This finding implies that collaboration is a different dimension from publication. Finally, the article discusses implications of the findings for evaluation systems.

Keywords:

• research collaboration
• international collaboration
• publication
• maturity of higher education systems
• English
• Leiden Ranking

Acknowledgements

This research was supported by the National Research Foundation of Korea Grant funded by the Korean Government (NRF-2010-330-B00232). We also thank the two special issue editors and two reviewers for their insightful comments on the draft of this article.