International research collaboration among Asian academics

Abstract

This study investigates international research collaboration among academics through an analysis of journal publication with a focus on 3 countries in the Asia, China, Japan, and Korea. The discussion on cross-border higher education has mainly focused on teaching activities such as student/faculty mobility or program exchange. However, international cooperation in higher education has many faces, and results in various forms. Knowledge exchange of faculty members, which is measured by co-author publication, is one of the important activities of international higher education cooperation. In particular, the knowledge share of Asian academics is getting increasing, they have expanded more opportunities of joint researches and academic interchanges with other foreign universities. To examine the international research collaboration of Asian academics, the online Science Citation Index Expanded database of the ISI Web of Knowledge is used for analysis. International research collaboration is defined as the share of articles published together with at least one author from another country worldwide. Based on bibliometric analysis, patterns of international co-authorship among China, Japan, Korea academics will be examined over the period 1980–2010, with an analysis of how these patterns have changed over time. The results of this study will show international co-authorship patterns including the distribution of internationally collaborative publications, the number of collaborative countries, changes of main partner countries among academics in 3 countries. With the information about the extent of scientific activities across countries, implications for collaborative countries and universities of this evolving relationship will be discussed.