Analysing Scientific Collaborations of New Zealand Institutions using Scopus Bibliometric Data

Analysing Scientific Collaborations of New Zealand Institutions using Scopus Bibliometric Data Samin Aref Department of Computer Science and Te Pūnaha Matatini University of Auckland, New Zealand sare618@aucklanduni.ac.nz David Friggens Ministry of Business Innovation & Employment, Wellington New Zealand david.friggens@mbie.govt.nz Shaun Hendy Department of Physics and Te Pūnaha Matatini University of Auckland, New Zealand shaun.hendy@auckland.ac.nz ABSTRACT Scientific collaborations are among the main enablers of development in small national science systems. Although analysing scientific collaborations is a well-established subject in scientometrics, evaluations of scientific collaborations within a country remain speculative with studies based on a limited number of fields or using data too inadequate to be representative of collaborations at a national level. This study represents a unique view on the collaborative aspect of scientific activities in New Zealand. We perform a quantitative study based on all Scopus publications in all subjects for more than 1500 New Zealand institutions over a period of 6 years to generate an extensive mapping of scientific collaboration at a national level. The comparative results reveal the level of collaboration between New Zealand institutions and business enterprises, government institutions, higher education providers, and private not for profit organisations in 2010-2015. Constructing a collaboration network of institutions, we observe a power-law distribution indicating that a small number of New Zealand institutions account for a large proportion of national collaborations. Network centrality concepts are deployed to identify the most central institutions of the country in terms of collaboration. We also provide comparative results on 15 universities and Crown research institutes based on 27 subject classifications. CCS CONCEPTS • Information systems → Digital libraries and archives; • Applied computing → Document management and text processing; • General and reference → Surveys and overviews; KEYWORDS Big data modelling, Scientific collaboration, Scientometrics, Network analysis, Scopus, New Zealand This is an author copy of the paper. The publisher’s verified version of the paper can be accessed on https://doi.org/10.1145/3167918.3167920 ACM acknowledges that this contribution was authored or co-authored by an employee, contractor or affiliate of a national government. As such, the Government retains a nonexclusive, royalty-free right to publish or reproduce this article, or to allow others to do so, for Government purposes only. ACM Reference format: Samin Aref, David Friggens, and Shaun Hendy. 2018. Analysing Scientific Collaborations of New Zealand Institutions using Scopus Bibliometric Data. In Proceedings of ACSW 2018: Australasian Computer Science Week 2018, January 29-February 2, 2018, Brisbane, QLD, Australia, 10 pages. https://doi.org/10.1145/3167918.3167920 1 INTRODUCTION There is a growing body of literature that recognises the importance of scientific collaboration in economic development [1]. The scientific collaborations can be analysed based on bibliometric data using network analysis tools and techniques [2]. The main objective of analysing scientific collaboration is to gain an understanding of how knowledge flows between authors [3, 4], institutions [5] and countries [6, 7]. It also helps quantifying research performance measures with a focus on the collaborative aspect of research [8]. Scientific collaboration is seen not only as a performance measure, but also a representation an entity outreach and connections to other entities. Some studies focus on collaborations within a country to compare researchers or institutions and facilitate national research policy development. Perc analysed collaboration at the level of individuals in Slovenia [9] and similar study has been undertaken for Turkey [10]. Collaborations can be investigated between different countries. Park et al. investigated collaborations between China and South Korea using bibliometric data [11]. Nguyen et al. analysed collaborations of Vietnam with several other countries [12]. The university-industry collaboration has been investigated extensively as an essential connection between institutions of a science system. Abramo et al. investigated the university- industry collaboration in Italy [13] and found that university researchers collaborating with industry have a higher research performance. Investigating collaborations between specific types of institutions in a country usually requires an analysis of research outputs that represent a collaboration tie between the two types of institutions [13]. Yoon and Park investigated the collaboration between South Korea universities, industry, and government using network analysis tools and techniques on patent data [14]. The intermediate

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