Measuring and characterizing research collaboration in SAARC countries

Scientific collaboration at regional and international levels has increased manifolds during the last 2 decades. The South Asian region, comprising of Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Maldives, Pakistan and Sri Lanka, habitats a significant part of the world population, and is emerging as a major knowledge producer. These South Asian countries are not only connected through shared history, language and culture, but also through an intergovernmental organization called South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC). This article attempts to measure and characterize the research collaboration in the SAARC countries during 2001-2019. The research publication data for analysis is obtained from the Web of Science database. Different kinds of collaboration- inter, mixed, intra and domestic- among the SAARC countries are measured and analyzed through a computational analysis. Results indicate that SAARC countries collaborate more with countries outside the region than within the region. The within region collaboration has grown in volume but is still less than 1% of the total research output from the region. The collaboration is also found to vary across subject areas, with Social Science & Mathematics having higher proportion of international collaboration, Medical Science & Physics having higher mixed-collaboration, and Social Science & Environment Science having higher intra collaboration. Major implications of the results are discussed.