Exploratory Analysis of Academic Collaborations between French and US

TL;DR

This paper explores the collaboration patterns between French and US academic institutions using network analysis on the Microsoft Academic Graph, revealing key institutions and increasing collaboration trends.

Contribution

It introduces a novel analysis of international collaborations between France and the US using bibliographic data and network analysis techniques.

Findings

Harvard, MIT, and CNRS are prominent institutions in collaborations.

Collaboration between France and US is increasing over time.

Network analysis provides detailed insights into collaboration patterns.

Abstract

International academic collaborations cultivate diversity in the research landscape and facilitate multiperspective methods, as the scope of each country's science depends on its needs, history, wealth etc. Moreover the quality of science differ significantly amongst nations\cite{king2004scientific}, which renders international collaborations a potential source to understand the dynamics between countries and their advancements. Analyzing these collaborations can reveal sharing expertise between two countries in different fields, the most well-known institutions of a nation, the overall success of collaborative efforts compared to local ones etc. Such analysis were initially performed using statistical metrics \cite{melin1996studying}, but network analysis has later proven much more expressive \cite{wagner2005mapping,gonzalez2008coauthorship}. In this exploratory analysis, we aim to examine the collaboration patterns between French and US institutions. Towards this, we capitalize on the Microsoft Academic Graph MAG \cite{sinha2015overview}, the largest open bibliographic dataset that contains detailed information for authors, publications and institutions. We use the coordinates of the world map to tally affiliations to France or USA. In cases where the coordinates of an affiliation were absent, we used its Wikipedia url and named entity recognition to identify the country of its address in the Wikipedia page. We need to stress that institute names have been volatile (due to University federations created) in the last decade in France, so this is a best effort trial. The results indicate an intensive and increasing scientific production in with , with certain institutions such as Harvard, MIT and CNRS standing out.