Korean international co-authorship in science 1994-1996

Abstract

Research performance in Korea has increased considerably in the past few years, both with regard to relative output of publications and the number of internationally co-authored papers. The purpose of this study is to characterise international scientific cooperation in Korea through the numbers of internationally co-authored papers covered by the Science Citation Index CD-ROM, 1994-1996. A total of 3,627 collaborative papers published in 1,083 scientific journals were selected to analyse papers written in collaboration between Korea and other countries. The data reveal that Korea’s co-authorship level with other countries was relatively high, representing 26.8% of national output. Among the collaborative papers, a large majority of the papers (84%) were authored by researchers at universities, while about 10% came from scientists at government-supported institutes and only 6% from industry. The country with the highest rate of cooperation with Korea is the USA (42%), followed by Japan, Italy, Germany, the UK and France. Considering the strong interaction between Korean and American science, economic and political factors appear to play a strong role in the international co-authorship process. The results show clear variation in levels of international cooperation according to the disciplines: technology, agriculture and earth sciences represent local interests, while physics, chemistry and biology are mainstream subjects.