International Co-authorship Relations in the Social Science Citation Index: Is Internationalization Leading the Network?
Loet Leydesdorff, Han Woo Park, and Caroline Wagner

TL;DR
This study examines international co-authorship patterns in social sciences, revealing regional clusters, the dominance of US and EU-28 in the network, and the increasing importance of international collaboration over time.
Contribution
It introduces an information-theoretical test to assess whether international or domestic collaborations dominate in social science research networks.
Findings
Four regional groups of nations identified in co-authorship networks.
International collaboration is generally more influential than domestic in aggregated data.
Growth of international networks complements, rather than replaces, national research collaborations.
Abstract
We analyze international co-authorship relations in the Social Science Citation Index 2011 using all citable items in the DVD-version of this index. Network statistics indicate four groups of nations: (i) an Asian-Pacific one to which all Anglo-Saxon nations (including the UK and Ireland) are attributed; (ii) a continental European one including also the Latin-American countries; (iii) the Scandinavian nations; and (iv) a community of African nations. Within the EU-28 (including Croatia), eleven of the EU-15 states have dominant positions. Collapsing the EU-28 into a single node leads to a bi-polar structure between the US and EU-28; China is part of the US-pole. We develop an information-theoretical test to distinguish whether international collaborations or domestic collaborations prevail; the results are mixed, but the international dimension is more important than the national one…
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Taxonomy
Topicsscientometrics and bibliometrics research · Complex Network Analysis Techniques · Web visibility and informetrics
