Analysing Scientific Collaborations of New Zealand Institutions using Scopus Bibliometric Data

TL;DR

This study provides a comprehensive quantitative analysis of scientific collaborations among New Zealand institutions across all fields over six years, revealing collaboration patterns, key institutions, and network structures at a national level.

Contribution

It offers the first extensive, data-driven mapping of New Zealand's scientific collaborations using all Scopus publications and network analysis techniques.

Findings

Power-law distribution of collaborations among institutions

Identification of central institutions via network centrality

High collaboration levels between universities, government, and industry

Abstract

Scientific collaborations are among the main enablers of development in small national science systems. Although analysing scientific collaborations is a well-established subject in scientometrics, evaluations of scientific collaborations within a country remain speculative with studies based on a limited number of fields or using data too inadequate to be representative of collaborations at a national level. This study represents a unique view on the collaborative aspect of scientific activities in New Zealand. We perform a quantitative study based on all Scopus publications in all subjects for more than 1500 New Zealand institutions over a period of 6 years to generate an extensive mapping of scientific collaboration at a national level. The comparative results reveal the level of collaboration between New Zealand institutions and business enterprises, government institutions, higher education providers, and private not for profit organisations in 2010-2015. Constructing a collaboration network of institutions, we observe a power-law distribution indicating that a small number of New Zealand institutions account for a large proportion of national collaborations. Network centrality concepts are deployed to identify the most central institutions of the country in terms of collaboration. We also provide comparative results on 15 universities and Crown research institutes based on 27 subject classifications.