A bilateral comparison of research performance at an institutional level

An extensive body of research indicated that the USA and China were the first two largest producers in the nanoscience and nanotechnology field while China performed better than USA in terms of quantity; it had produced inferior quality publications. Yet, no studies investigated whether the specific institutions are consistent with these conclusions or not. In this study, we identify two institutions National Center for Nanoscience and Technology (NCNST) from China and University of California Los Angeles-California Nanosystems Institute (CNSI) from the USA) and compare their scientific research. Further, we develop and exploit a novel and updated dataset on paper co-authorship to assess their scientific research. Our analysis reveals NCNST has many advantages in regards to author and paper quantities, growth rate and the strength of collaborations but loses dominance with respect to research quality. We do find that the collaboration networks of both NCNST and CNSI have small-world and scale-free properties. Besides, the analysis of knowledge networks shows that they have similar research interests or hotspots. Using statistical models, we test and discover that degree centrality has a significant inverted-U shape effect on scientific output and influence. However, we fail to find any significant effect of structural holes.