RESUMEN

Although previous studies of today's globalised and competitive research landscape have mentioned the research collaborations of CANZUK countries (i.e., Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom), none have yet studied them in detail. Further, such studies have used different measures of international research collaboration (IRC), resulting in disparate findings. This paper, therefore, analyses the strengths of CANZUK research collaborations, how those collaborations have changed over time, and assesses the effect of three ways of measures on the results (absolute strength, bilateral similarity, and multilateral similarity). We provide a detailed characterisation of the CANZUK research network and its relationships with partner countries, which reveals that the most collaborative CANZUK countries are the UK and Australia, among other findings. We also confirm that many findings differ depending on which measures are used. We offer an explanation of this difference with reference to the nature of the measures (i.e., what they really measure) and make suggestions for suitable measures in future studies depending on their purpose. Finally, we discuss how this study's findings can be used by research policy makers (in CANZUK and elsewhere) in deciding on research strategy and by researchers in appropriately measuring IRC.

Asunto(s)

Vino , Humanos , Investigadores , Reino Unido , Canadá , Proyectos de Investigación

RESUMEN

Collaborative partners are important in international research collaboration. The research collaborations between four CANZUK countries (Canada, Australia, New Zealand and the United Kingdom) are examined to see whether their research connections are different from the research relationships with other countries. This paper measures the affinity index values and analyses the development of research collaborations among CANZUK countries with those between the CANZUK and other countries. The whole counting method and the fractional counting method are applied in this study to compare the differences in the results. The findings show that although the affinity index values of CANZUK countries were decreasing over time, the importance of CANZUK partners to CANZUK countries has likely increased over time at the expense of the other partners' importance. The study also shows the minor differences in results obtained by applying two different counting methods. These differences can be explained by the nature of the counting methods, and the choice to use either one of these two counting methods should be considered in other international research collaboration studies.