The triple helix and international collaboration in science

What is it about?

Previous studies of international scientific collaboration have rarely gone beyond revealing the structural relationships between countries. Considering how scientific collaboration is actually initiated, this study focuses on the organization and sector levels of international coauthorship networks, going beyond a country-level description. Based on a network analysis of coauthorship networks between members of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), this study attempts to gain a better understanding of international scientific collaboration by exploring the structure of the coauthorship network in terms of university-industry-government (UIG) relationships, the mode of knowledge production, and the underlying dynamic of collaboration in terms of geographic, linguistic, and economic factors. The results suggest that the United States showed overwhelming dominance in all bilateral UIG combinations with the exception of the government-government (GG) network. Scientific collaboration within the industry sector was concentrated in a few players, whereas that between the university and industry sectors was relatively less concentrated. Despite the growing participation from other sectors, universities were still the main locus of knowledge production, with the exception of 5 countries. The university sector in English-speaking wealthy countries and the government sector of non–English-speaking, less-wealthy countries played a key role in international collaborations between OECD countries. The findings did not provide evidence supporting the institutional proximity argument.

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