Is there convergence in international research collaboration? An exploration at the country level in the basic and applied science fields

This paper examines the patterns of convergence in international scientific collaboration across a set of developed and developing countries from 1997 through 2012. The empirical analysis was carried out in a novel way applying the methodology developed by Phillips and Sul (Econometrica 75:1771-1855, 2007; J Appl Econom 24:1153-1185, 2009) to international co-publication data from a US National Science Foundation dataset (NSF in National Center for Science and Engineering statistics, http://www.nsf.gov/, 2014). First, the convergence analysis across countries is carried out for all research fields combined and, secondly, for the basic and applied science fields separately. The results suggest that there has not been an overall convergence in international scientific collaboration patterns during the analyzed period. In contrast, there is evidence of four scientific convergence clubs and three divergent countries in the aggregate of all research fields. However, our results seem to indicate that there is a tendency toward a gradual convergence among the more scientifically developed countries. The results also show the existence of international research collaboration convergence clubs for the fields of basic science research and applied science with five and four convergence clubs, respectively.