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Globalization and de-globalization in nanotechnology research: the role of China

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Abstract

The share of nanotechnology publications involving authors from more than one country more than doubled in the 1990s, but then fell again until 2004, before recovering somewhat during the latter years of the decade. Meanwhile, the share of nanotechnology papers involving at least one Chinese author increased substantially over the last two decades. Papers involving Chinese authors are far less likely to be internationally co-authored than papers involving authors from other countries. Nonetheless, this appears to be changing as Chinese nanotechnology research becomes more advanced. An arithmetic decomposition confirms that China’s growing share of such research accounts, in large part, for the observed stagnation of international collaboration. Thus two aspects of the globalization of science can work in opposing directions: diffusion to initially less scientifically advanced countries can depress international collaboration rates, while at the same time scientific advances in such countries can reverse this trend. We find that the growth of China’s scientific community explains some, but not all of the dynamics of China’s international collaboration rate. We therefore provide an institutional account of these dynamics, drawing on Stichweh’s [Social Science information 35(2):327–340, 1996] original paper on international scientific collaboration, which, in examining the interrelated development of national and international scientific networks, predicts a transitional phase during which science becomes a more national enterprise, followed by a phase marked by accelerating international collaboration. Validating the application of this approach, we show that Stichweh’s predictions, based on European scientific communities in the 18th and 19th centuries, seem to apply to the Chinese scientific community in the 21st century.

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Notes

  1. Wagner and Leydesdorff (2005a) show that the share of all SCI-recorded scientific papers that involve authors from more than one country roughly doubled, from 8.7% in 1990 to 15.6% in 2000. Using slightly different data, they show a continuation of this upwards trend through 2005 (Leydesdorff and Wagner 2008). Wagner (2008) notes that this trend is similar across many scientific disciplines. The United States National Science Board (NSB 2010) finds that international collaboration rates in social sciences, mathematics, engineering and other sciences rose from 8 to 22% between 1988 and 2008.

  2. In this paper we employ the standard term “diffusion” to describe the spread of scientific activity to formerly underrepresented countries. We do so, however, with the caveat that while some of the growth in Chinese scientific productivity can be attributed to the diffusion of knowledge to China from more scientifically advanced institutions in the U.S, Europe and Japan, some can also be attributed to China’s growing efforts at “indigenous innovation,” described below. The diffusion model, insofar as it connotes flows from core to periphery, does not adequately capture the complexity of China’s rising share of global scientific productivity.

  3. Chinese publications have grown rapidly in quantity, whether one looks at nanotechnology only (Youtie et al. 2008), or at science in general (Kostoff et al. 2007). Indeed, the data used for the current study (described in “Data” section) show that China’s nanotechnology research output (as measured by the quantity of publications in ISI-listed journals) surpassed that of Japan in 2002, and even that of the US in 2008. Robust upwards trends in the research output of other East Asian economies—particularly Japan, South Korea and Taiwan, have also been reported for some time now (Kostoff et al. 2006b).

  4. For a description of some of these efforts, see Appelbaum and Parker (2008 China); Cabinet Office of the Japanese Government (2000, pp. 48–49—Japan), and Defazio et al. (2009—European Union).

  5. There is bibliometric evidence on this. While the quantity of publications by Chinese authors grew rapidly, quality has lagged (Kostoff et al. 2006b), but has recently begun to turn around (Youtie et al. 2008); and the productivity of Chinese Science and Technology researchers is low (OECD, p. 332).

  6. Our analysis certainly will not resolve these debates. Our point here is only that the political heat generated by China’s scientific surge motivates a more thorough search for the proper understanding of these trends.

  7. These shares would need to be adjusted so they add up to one if our objective were to present a sense of the changing distribution of effort or some notion of power. However, given that we are interested in international collaboration, the unadjusted figures provide a direct sense of national involvement, which will be useful for putting the growth of international collaboration rates in context.

  8. It should be noted that even while the shares of papers involving the authors from the US, EU and Japan decreased, the total number of papers from each increased (not shown, in the interests of brevity).

  9. Recall that papers produced by scientists in multiple EU countries are considered internationally collaborative.

  10. One important caveat: By construction, all internationally collaborative papers involving country c enter the numerator when calculating country c’s international collaboration rate, and no internationally collaborative papers involving country c are counted towards the rest of the world’s international collaboration rate. Thus, we systematically underestimate the international collaboration gap, and therefore the contribution of diffusion effects towards less internationally collaborative countries to slowing international collaboration.

  11. Estimates of the number of nanotechnology researchers by country and year seem to be unavailable.

  12. This trend towards Chinese language publication is not limited to nanotechnology (e.g., Valkimadi et al. 2009).

  13. For a review of some of these concerns, see Appelbaum and Parker (2012b).

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Acknowledgment

The authors are indebted to Cong Cao for his excellent comments on an early draft of this paper, and to Quinn McCreight and Aisa Villanueva for superb research assistance. All errors are our own. This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. SES 0531184. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation. This study was conducted under the auspices of the University of California at Santa Barbara Center for Nanotechnology in Society (www.cns.ucsb.edu).

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Correspondence to Aashish Mehta.

Appendix

Appendix

Nanotechnology-specific query terms (Kostoff et. al 2006a)

‘‘NANOPARTICLE* OR NANOTUB* OR NANOSTRUCTURE* OR NANOCOMPOSITE* OR NANOWIRE* OR NANOCRYSTAL* OR NANOFIBER* OR NANOFIBRE* OR NANOSPHERE* OR NANOROD* OR NANOTECHNOLOG* OR NANOCLUSTER* OR NANOCAPSULE* OR NANOMATERIAL* OR NANOFABRICAT* OR NANOPOR* OR NANOPARTICULATE* OR NANOPHASE OR NANOPOWDER* OR NANOLITHOGRAPHY OR NANO-PARTICLE* OR NANODEVICE*OR NANODOT* OR NANOINDENT* OR NANOLAYER* OR NANOSCIENCE OR NANOSIZE* OR NANOSCALE* OR ((NM OR NANOMETER* OR NANOMETRE*) AND (SURFACE* OR FILM* OR GRAIN* OR POWDER* OR SILICON OR DEPOSITIONOR LAYER* OR DEVICE* OR CLUSTER* OR CRYSTAL* OR MATERIAL* OR ATOMIC FORCE MICROSCOP* OR TRANSMISSION ELECTRON MICROSCOP* OR SCANNING TUNNELING MICROSCOP*)) OR QUANTUM DOT* OR QUANTUM WIRE* OR ((SELF-ASSEMBL* OR SELF-ORGANIZ*) AND (MONOLAYER* OR FILM* OR NANO*.

OR QUANTUM* OR LAYER* OR MULTILAYER* OR ARRAY*)) OR NANOELECTROSPRAY* OR COULOMB BLOCKADE* OR MOLECULAR WIRE*’’.

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Mehta, A., Herron, P., Motoyama, Y. et al. Globalization and de-globalization in nanotechnology research: the role of China. Scientometrics 93, 439–458 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-012-0687-8

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