Research Collaboration: Characterizing the global trends during the last five decades

Collaborative research has become an integral part of any flourishing academic or industrial ecosystem. Collaboration is not only associated with higher research productivity but has also been found to be positively correlated with impact. Some recent studies have revealed steady and universal increase in academic collaborations, however, several important aspects like country-wide variation of collaboration dynamics and effect of collaboration on productivity at global and national level, etc., are not analysed. This paper attempts to bridge this research gap by analysing the global research publication data for the last five decades. The results show a rise in research collaboration globally, though with varying patterns of domestic and international collaboration. The dynamics of collaboration at international level is analysed and the boost in productivity for various countries is computed, indicating varying effects/ dependence of countries in international research collaboration.