View by category
Back to all metricsGeographical collaboration in SciVal indicates the extent to which an entity’s publications have international, national, or institutional co-authorship, and single authorship. This number is a count unless the percentage symbol (%) is visible.
Each publication is assigned to 1 of 4 mutually exclusive geographical collaboration types, based on its affiliation information: international, national, institutional, or single authorship. A single publication may of course display each of international, national and institutional collaboration in its affiliation information, but a single geographical collaboration type is assigned to ensure that the sum of an entity’s publications across the 4 categories adds up to 100% of the publications with the necessary affiliation information.
In some cases, a researcher can have two affiliations against their name on a publication. This is not an error, but merely reflects the institutions to which the researcher was affiliated when writing the paper. How does this affect geographical collaboration in SciVal? For example, a researcher publishes an output with both an academic and a corporate institution listed against their name. If they are the sole researcher on the output, then no collaboration is recorded (single authors cannot collaborate with themselves). If they have co-authored with someone affiliated to a different institution to the researcher, then geographical collaboration is recorded.
In short, the definitions are as follows:
International collaboration:
- more than 1 author +
- more than 1 country code at publication level
Only national collaboration:
- more than one author +
- only one country code at publication level +
- Author affiliations resolve to 2 or more SciVal Institutions
Only institutional collaboration:
- more than one author +
- only one country code at publication level +
- All affiliations resolve to the same SciVal Institution
The different collaboration types are mutually exclusive and you can look at them like a hierarchy: the system first looks if there is an international collaboration. If not, it looks for a national collaboration, etc. When field-weighting geographical collaboration, a score is calculated using the same methodology as for the calculation of the Field-Weighted Citation Impact. The document level international/national collaboration ratio is computed based on the expected international/national Collaboration for that document type, publication year grouping and subject area assignment. In other words, instead of using citations to calculate the field-weighted thresholds, the document level international/national collaboration ratios are used instead. The option to field-weight is only available for Collaboration on the international and national level.
The metric was built in collaboration with the Swedish Foundation for International Cooperation in Research and Higher Education (STINT). Read the Research Trends paper about the metric.opens in new tab/window.
- Field-weighted geographical collaboration of 1.00 indicates that the entity’s Collaboration has been exactly as would be expected based on the global average for similar publications; the Field-Weighted Collaboration of “World”, or the entire Scopus database, is 1.00.
- Field-weighted geographical collaboration of more than 1.00 indicates that the entity’s Collaboration has been more than would be expected based on the global average for similar publications; for example, 2.11 means 111% more than the world average.
- Field-weighted geographical collaboration of less than 1.00 indicates that the entity’s Collaboration has been less than would be expected based on the global average for similar publications; for example, 0.87 means 13% less than the world average.
Collaboration is a:
- Collaboration metric
- Snowball Metric
- “Power Metric” when the “Total value” option is selected, but not when the “Percentage” option is selected
- Explore the extent of international and other types of geographical collaboration within a data set
- Benchmark the geographical collaboration of entities of different sizes, but in similar disciplines:
- It is advised to select the 'Percentage' option when comparing entities of different sizes, to normalize for this variable.
- Showcase extensive international collaboration that may underpin a set of scholarly output
- Investigate collaborative activity very early in a new strategy, or for an early-career researcher, since the affiliation data underlying this metric do not require time to accumulate to reliable levels in the same way as citation data do
- Look at publishing activity in a way that is difficult to manipulate
- Benchmarking the geographical collaboration of entities in different disciplines:
- The typical collaborative behavior of academics may differ between disciplines, such as mathematics and medicine, or humanities and molecular biology.
- It is not advisable to use this metric to compare entities in distinct disciplines without accounting for these differences.
- When comparing entities made up of a mixture of disciplines, such as an Institution, or a Group of Institutions such as a US state, it is advised to apply the Research Area filter to focus on one field that is common between all the entities. It is also advised to use field weighting to help offset this affect.
- Entities are small and there may be gaps in their output within the Scopus coverage:
- A single missing publication from a small data set may have a significant negative impact on apparent partnerships, whereas the effect of 1 or a few missing publication(s) from a large data set may be acceptable.
- The only way to account for this is to be vigilant, particularly when looking at small data sets such as the Scholarly Output of an early-career researcher, or to limit the use of geographical collaboration metrics to comparing larger data sets in which the potential gaps in the database coverage likely have a similar effect on all entities being viewed and do not invalidate the comparison.
- Understanding activity in a discipline with an obvious national focus, such as Finnish literature or cultural studies, when institutional and national collaboration may be of more use than international collaboration.
- Number of Citing Countriesopens in new tab/window, which indicates the diversity of countries in which Researchers have built on an entity’s publications. It is likely to be higher if an entity’s international collaboration activity involves several countries, rather than just 1 or 2, even though both situations can give 100% international collaboration.
- Geographical Collaboration Impactopens in new tab/window, which calculates the average Citations per Publication for publications with different types of geographical collaboration, and indicates how beneficial these collaborations are with respect to citation impact
- The set of all other “Power Metrics” whose value tends to increase as the entity becomes bigger: Scholarly Output, Subject Area Count, Scopus Source Title Count, Citation Count, Cited Publications (“Total value”), Number of Citing Countries, Academic-Corporate Collaboration (“Total value”), Outputs in Top Citation Percentiles (“Total value”), Publications in Top Journal Percentiles (“Total value”), and h-indices
- The set of all other “time-independent metrics”, which provide useful, reliable information immediately upon publication and do not rely on the passing of time for useful data to accumulate: Scholarly Output, Subject Area Count, Scopus Source Title Count, AcademicCorporate Collaboration, and Publications in Top Journal Percentiles
Did we answer your question?
Related answers
Recently viewed answers
Functionality disabled due to your cookie preferences