Is academia becoming more localised? The growth of regional knowledge networks within international research collaboration

TL;DR

The paper investigates the trend of increasing regional collaboration in international research, revealing a shift from geopolitical to regional clustering over five decades, challenging assumptions about globalization.

Contribution

It provides empirical evidence that regional research networks have grown relative to international ties, highlighting a transition in collaboration patterns over time.

Findings

Regional collaboration has increased over five decades.

Community structures now align more with geographic regions.

Historical geopolitical ties have become less dominant in research networks.

Abstract

It is well-established that the process of learning and capability building is core to economic development and structural transformation. Since knowledge is `sticky', a key component of this process is learning-by-doing, which can be achieved via a variety of mechanisms including international research collaboration. Uncovering significant inter-country research ties using Scopus co-authorship data, we show that within-region collaboration has increased over the past five decades relative to international collaboration. Further supporting this insight, we find that while communities present in the global collaboration network before 2000 were often based on historical geopolitical or colonial lines, in more recent years they increasingly align with a simple partition of countries by regions. These findings are unexpected in light of a presumed continual increase in globalisation, and have significant implications for the design of programmes aimed at promoting international research collaboration and knowledge diffusion.