International Research Collaborations

This research report, commissioned by the Australian Council of Learned Academies to provide evidence-based research and interdisciplinary findings on how to improve Australia's engagement with the countries of Asia , focuses on three areas of engagement: the facilitative role of multilingualism in the context of English language dominance, the significance of research collaboration in building stronger transnational links across the region, and the crucial importance of deepening cultural relations to overcome the long history of culturally distant relationships between Australia and its neighbouring countries. Overall, the report argues that smart engagement with Asia requires going beyond short-termism, opportunism and focus on economic benefit, and working towards nurturing wide-ranging, long-term, and mutually beneficial relations, based on the principle of reciprocity. It also highlights the important role played by diasporas (Asians in Australia, as well as Australians in Asia) in strengthening Australia-Asia relations.

Currently, the most sophisticated way of delivering distance education programs is through the use of immersive worlds, because both learner and facilitators must learn to interact socially and academically in non-tangible worlds through a de-centered and reconstituted identity. However, we believe that learning in virtual worlds should be connected to the real world, as it is the case presented here.

The purpose of this study was to improve the reading habits of low-income Mexican children in Guadalajara, México, and in Los Angeles. The paper presents a competency-based course  developed in Second Life and demonstrates the importance of this platform in launching an international effort between Fielding Graduate University in the United States and the University of Guadalajara in Mexico.

The viability of establishing non-colonial relationships between communities of the United States and Mexico depended on the adoption of critical epistemologies using ubiquitous communication platforms in order to improve equity and social justice through participatory action research activities.

This report summarises the research conducted by the Australia India Institute for the Commonwealth Department of Education and Training on developments in India’s higher education sector. It outlines key areas of difference between the higher education systems in Australia and India and highlights the challenges and opportunities for effective engagement between Australian universities and Indian higher education institutions.

Science is increasingly defined by multidimensional collaborative networks. Despite the unprecedented growth of scientific collaboration around the globe—the collaborative turn—geography still matters for the cognitive enterprise. The spatial location and distance between scholars and research organisations affect their likelihood to collaborate and to achieve results that expand the knowledge frontier. At the same time, the developmental prospects of cities, regions, and countries result from, and depend on, their place in the global network of research collaboration.

This book explores how geography conditions scientific collaboration and how collaboration affects the spatiality of science. Addressing these questions requires the reconstruction of historical developments that led to the collaborative turn in science, the examination of mutual relations between science and places, and the analysis of spatial patterns of research collaboration at various levels: from individual to global. By combining a vast array of approaches, concepts, and methodologies, the volume offers a comprehensive theoretical framework for the geography of scientific collaboration.

The momentous role of collaboration for contemporary science implies that understanding the processes and patterns of research collaboration is now essential, not only for scholars interested in science studies, but also for policymakers and managers of research organisations. Those more practically oriented readers may be particularly attracted by the case studies of scientific collaboration policies from the European Union, the United States, and China, as well as the catalogue of tools for scientific collaboration policy.

The paper investigates core-periphery relations in the network of international scientific collaboration. We hypothesise that benefits from collaboration depend, ceteris paribus, on roles played by collaborators in the given collaboration. To capture the impact of various roles, we compare mean citation of collaborative papers in which authors from different countries perform a leading or a complementary role. The leading role can be attributed to scientists indicated as corresponding authors, while non-corresponding authors can be seen as complementary partners. Thus, we compare mean citations of internationally co-authored papers in which scholars affiliated in particular countries are either corresponding authors (“corresponding author paper”) or non-corresponding authors (“non-corresponding author paper”). The analysis is based on Web of Science data covering the period 2000-2013. The results of the study suggest that core countries seem to benefit most from international cooperation when they lead the research (i.e. when they play the role of a corresponding author), while peripheral countries benefit most from being led (i.e. when they play the role of a non-corresponding author). This can suggest that increasing international collaboration in science strengthens persistence of the global distribution of research excellence embedded in long-term historical processes.

This paper presents exhaust gas emissions characteristcs of a new direct injection (DI) compressed natural gas (CNG) engine using a low cost catalytic conveter (Catco). The pollutants exhaust gas emissions measured were CO, HC and NOx with and without Catco. The Catco was developed based on catalyst materials consisting of metal oxides such as titanium dioxide (TiO2) and cobalt oxide (CoO) with wiremesh substrate. Both of the catalyst materials (such as TiO2 and CoO) are inexpensive in comparison to conventional catalysts (noble metals) such as palladium or platinum. In addition, the noble metals such as platinum group metal are now indentified as human health risk due to their rapid emissions in the environment from various resources like conventional catalytic converter, jewelers and other medical usages. It can be mentioned that both the CNG-DI engine and TiO2/CoO based catalytic converter were developed under a research collaboration program. The original engine manufacture catalytic conveter (OEM Catco) was tested for comparison purposes. The OEM Catco was based on noble metal catalyst with honeycomb ceramic substrate. It is experimentally found that the conversion efficiencies of TiO2/CoO based catalytic converter are 93%, 89% and 82% for NO x, CO and HC emissions respectively. It is calculated that the TiO2/CoO based catalytic converter reduces 24%,41% and 40% higher NOx, CO and HC emissions in comparison to OEM Catco respectively. The objective of this paper is to develop a low cost three way catalytic converter to be used with the newly developed CNG-DI engine. Detailed review on catalytic converter, low cost catalytic converter development characteristics and CNG-DI engine test results have been presented with discussions. © 2008 SAE International.

http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=2&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0CDAQFjAB&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ias.ac.in%2Fsadhana%2FPdf2009Jun%2F467.pdf&ei=fDoZU6fBB8b_rAfllYHgAg&usg=AFQjCNGcoAGJ5CeCgDskEuVuXmqVZroG9Q&sig2=hzzINgMVEBQf06Ehb4oCjQ&bvm=bv.62578216,d.bmk
http://papers.sae.org/2008-01-1550/

This paper explores the policy agendas and forces that drive academic partnerships in one of the rapidly changing and ambitious jurisdictions of East Asia – Hong Kong, SAR, China. The jurisdiction’s affinitive relations with mainland China and other neighboring Chinese societies, including  Macau, Singapore and Taiwan, shape new interdependencies that have the potential to spearhead change within higher education systems in the region. By using a multi-level analysis approach, the paper examines how global, regional and national interdependencies affect the policy agendas of academic partnerships.  The study is embedded into the larger discourse of higher education studies about relational dynamics between universities and societies at the time of globalization.

In this conference through our many sessions, debates, round table discussions, I feel that there is urgency to move away from generic models. New approaches need to be devised, or explored within local contexts and older ones such development journalism that needs to be re-examined and given space to grow afresh. Journalism practices, education and research methodologies should be informed of the alternative options, base their foundations on local knowledge systems, needs and values. As educators and practitioners, we need to encourage young people to learn and practice journalism in such ways that borrows knowledge from their communities and benefits them directly by sharing their findings with them.
Journalism research and education cannot be fully internationalized apart from the world-as-a-single-place and thus represents a key component in these social transformations, both as cause and outcome.

This report presents my reflections from a 5-day visit to the Faculty of Education (FoE) of a government university in Egypt in March 2015 with a team from the School of Education, University of Leicester, UK, as part of the European Commission’s TEMPUS Project: Capacity Development of Faculties of Education in International Approaches to Teacher Education.  Based on institutional visits, presentations and interviews with people working in the sector, I will sketch my understanding of the past and present status of the TEMPUS Project focal issues – Practicum, Teacher Professional Development and Action Research – before considering challenges and potential ways forward.

This study had three objectives: to examine patterns of research collaboration in Ghana, to study reasons why Ghanaian-affiliated researchers collaborate with others (both inside and outside Ghana), and to determine the roles of Ghanaian-affiliated researchers in collaborations. The methodology comprised a bibliometric analysis of articles in the Web of Science for the years 1990 to 2013, and an online survey of 190 Ghanaian-affiliated corresponding authors of articles. Collaboration increased from 73% in 1990–1997 to 93% in 2006–2013, and international collaboration from 49 to 73% over the same time. The public university and government sectors, together with the three most research-productive organisations in each sector, were found to be highly dependent on collaboration for research production. The online survey revealed that collaboration with researchers in three regions (within Ghana, within the rest of Africa, and outside Africa) was to a large extent initiated by existing personal/working relationships. Access to expertise and enhanced productivity were the main reasons why Ghanaian-affiliated researchers collaborated with others in these three regions. Collaborators within Ghana were largely involved in the collection of data or fieldwork. Collaborators from outside Africa played instrumental roles in providing resources and securing research funds.

Six case studies of international cooperation at the subfield level are presented and compared. The cases examine international collaboration by detailing co-authorship links among researchers by field, evidenced at the level of the nation. Cases are offered based on possible drivers for collaboration: sharing ideas, cooperating around equipment, cooperating around resources, and exchanging data. Scientometric and network analysis of linkages are presented and discussed for each of the six cases: astrophysics, geophysics, mathematical logic, polymers, soil science, and virology. Visualizations of the cosine matrices within each field are compared for 1990 and 2000. The research shows that international collaboration grew in all the fields at rates higher than the international average. The possibility that rapid increases in international collaboration in science can be attributed in part to certain drivers related to access to resources or equipment sharing could not be upheld by the data. Other possible explanations for the rapid growth of collaboration are offered, including the possibility that weak ties evidenced by geographically remote collaboration can promote new knowledge creation.

In recent years, more and more international comparative research has been conducted in internationally and geographically spread project teams and international research networks, and comparative research has become a fundamentally collaborative effort. Accordingly, research in such projects has to cope with a higher level of methodological complexity than non-comparative research as well as with a particular socio-cultural complexity. This complexity can have an influence on the research process and therefore on the quality and validity of the results, an issue that has so far not been discussed much, neither in higher education research nor beyond. Thus, this article refers to studies that provide empirical insights into comparative collaborative research teams and illuminates why international collaboration in comparative research projects is both a source of " better solutions " and of " amplified complications " and how they are interrelated. On this basis it provides a conceptual reflection and delineates dimensions of task-related, methodological complexity and team diversity. While comparative research has specific methodological challenges that can be alleviated by international team collaboration, collaborative research has particular social challenges that can be aggravated in comparative research. The conclusion makes propositions for further analyses, discusses lessons for comparative higher education research and sets out implications for its institutional development.

"This study examines international research collaboration among Chinese and Korean academics. International research collaboration among academics, which is generally measured by
co-authored publications, is an important part of the internationalization of higher education, not only at an individual level but also at institutional and national levels. This study uses the online Science Citation Index database from Web of Knowledge for the analysis and demonstrates descriptive results of international co-authored publication patterns. International research collaboration is defined as the share of articles published together with at least one author from another country anywhere in the world. The study examines how international research collaboration patterns have changed from 1975 to 2010 in China and South Korea. In particular, it focuses on the growth of international research collaboration, the main collaborative countries among Chinese and Korean academics, and the differences in international research collaboration patterns by academic discipline."

Cross-border academic collaborations in conflict zones are vulnerable to escalated turbulence, liability concerns and flagging support. Multi-level stakeholder engagement at home and abroad is essential for securing the political and financial sustainability of such collaborations. This study examines the multilayered stakeholder arrangements within an international academic health science network contributing to peace-building in the Middle East. While organizational forms in this collaboration change to reflect the structural, epistemic and political expectations of various support groups operating locally and globally, the legitimacy of the international research and its contribution to the peace-building process last as long as institutional norms of academic enterprise – integrity, impartiality and collegiality – are sustained. This paper analyzes the reconciliatory strategies used by the collaborating health scientists to mitigate organizational turbulence, reduce resource asymmetries and continually build and rebuild bridges across stakeholder communities.

The Survey of Chinese and Indian diasporic scholars in Australia was undertaken for the Asia Literacy: Language and Beyond project. The project was led by Professor Ien Ang, Institute for Culture and Society, University of Western Sydney and the Asia Literacy: Language and Beyond Expert Working Group. The project was administered by the Asia Literacy: Language and Beyond secretariat under the ACOLA Securing Australia’s Future program. The Survey of Chinese and Indian diasporic scholars in Australia explored the role that Chinese and Indian diasporic scholars living in Australia play in the promotion of people-to-people links with researchers and communities in China and India, as well as elsewhere.
  The research literature regarding diaspora and increased connectivity with scholars in China and India is rich and compelling. China’s growth in research investment, publication and participation has been remarkable; while India’s growth in research publication and participation has increased substantially in recent years, supporting India’s depiction as the “sleeping giant”. Chinese and Indian diaspora are spread throughout the world, across all continents. Notwithstanding the important ‘identity’ issues associated with the concept of, and implications arising from “diaspora” assignation, this includes very large numbers of globally mobile Chinese and Indian scholars. These scholars play a vital role in driving innovation and economic growth, forging international collaborations and improving cross-cultural understanding. In Australia, the resident population of Chinese and Indian immigrants has rapidly increased, and now totals some 387,000 Chinese and 337,000 Indian immigrants (2011). The number of foreign-born scholars (including doctoral candidates) in Australia includes large and growing numbers of scholars from China and India. At the same time, Chinese and Indian international students are vitally important to Australia’s export education industry, while the recruitment of the best Chinese and Indian graduating students through “two-step migration” contributes to the flow of international scholars into Australia.
  The transnational flows of people and ideas and international scholarly collaborations have grown in recent decades. This growth has been attributed to the rising importance of global phenomena, dispersion of expertise, high cost of major research infrastructure, growth of information communication technology and ease of international travel. Concomitantly, the proportion of the world’s collaboratively authored scholarly publications has increased, as has Australia’s. In the globalized, knowledge-based world, preliminary concerns regarding “brain drain” have now turned to opportunities to leverage “brain circulation” and “diaspora options”. Globally, governments have developed diaspora policy responses spanning economic, knowledge-economy, migration, education and research and development (R&D) considerations. The Australian, Chinese and Indian governments have all recognized the important opportunities presented by expanding people-to-people connectivity and international research collaborations. 
  The Asia Literacy: Language and Beyond secretariat administered the survey in the period July-August, 2014. In total, 244 survey responses were received. The survey respondents were overwhelmingly Australian citizens or permanent residents. The vast majority was born in China (89 respondents) or India (85 respondents). The remaining respondents were born in Australia (11), another Asian country (35), a Pacific country (7), or another country outside the Asia-Pacific region (9).  Respondents identified their ethnic and/or cultural backgrounds in various ways, broadly described in most instances as ‘Chinese’ or ‘Indian’. Many respondents elaborated, demonstrating the complexity and layering of ethnicity conceptions spanning geographical, religious and cultural distinctions. The age profile was skewed towards mid- to late-career respondents.
  The respondents were highly educated, primarily doctoral degree holders, or holders of a postgraduate degree or postgraduate diploma. Respondents’ postgraduate qualifications were predominantly obtained from Australia, followed by India and China; however some obtained their postgraduate qualifications from the dominant export education players (the United States, United Kingdom and Canada). Over half of the respondents had stability in their employment arrangements, having employment in a permanent position. The respondents were overwhelmingly employed in a research-intensive position, from a wide disciplinary spread predominantly science and engineering. Many respondents were multilingual. Almost all were fluent in English and many were also fluent either in Indian languages (predominantly Hindi) or Chinese languages (predominantly Putonghua).

Global health is becoming an important area of inquiry and learning in North American research universities, stemming from on-going and new commitments to the field by multiple governmental and non-governmental agents. External demands for research and education in global health require enhanced inter-disciplinary, inter-sectoral and international collaborations, all perceived as growing trends but often not easily accommodated in universities. This paper investigates how four leading universities in Canada and the US have entered the field of global health, exploring the relationships among national contexts, academic structures, and institutional strategies. Content analysis of institutional records is triangulated with data from sixty interviews with academic leaders and researchers at Harvard, Johns Hopkins, McGill and Toronto. Resource asymmetries emerge as an important differentiating factor shaping the emergence of global health in the American and Canadian institutions. Domestic sources of support and previous academic structures provided important cumulative advantages to the US campuses in claiming national and international leadership in the field.

Since 1984, the European Union has established seven Framework Programmes for research and technological development, in which funding activities are seen as a key concept to link Europe's research excellence in transnational R&D networks. The rise of European technology policies is due to the fact that the innovation process is perceived as a complex and highly dynamic process, in which market failure can be prevented by creating linkages between science and technology. To gain leadership in key scientific and technology areas, the research Framework Programmes support cooperation between universities, industry, research centres and public authorities, aimed at creating durable cooperation links and better integration and coordination of research efforts across the European Union. The FP6 funded research project NEMO -Network Models, Governance and R&D collaboration networks -aims to investigate the interplay between political governance, structure and function in the European Framework Programmes. NEMO focuses on R&D collaboration networks both at the programme and project levels. In this paper we take a closer look at intra-project collaboration that has been induced by EU Framework Programmes and focus on individual projects and researchers. We look at expectations and motivations of organisations in participating in collaborative R&D projects; we study criteria for partner choice in current and future R&D projects and we look at intra-project linkages especially in terms of doing joint research. Also the perceived problems, challenges and rewards of multidisciplinary and inter-organisational collaboration are discussed.

This paper presents characteristics of a new catalytic converter (catco) to be used for natural gas fuelled engine. The catco were developed based on catalyst materials consisting of metal oxides such as titanium dioxide (TiO 2 ) and cobalt oxide (CoO) with wire mesh substrate. Both of the catalyst materials (such as TiO 2 and CoO) are inexpensive in comparison with conventional catalysts (noble metals) such as palladium or platinum. In addition, the noble metals such as platinum group metals are now identified as human health risk due to their rapid emissions in the environment from various resources like conventional catalytic converter, jewelers and other medical usages. It can be mentioned that the TiO 2 /CoO based catalytic converter and a new natural gas engine such as compressed natural gas (CNG) direct injection (DI) engine were developed under a research collaboration program. The original engine manufacture catalytic conveter (OEM catco) was tested for comparison purposes. The OEM catco was based on noble metal catalyst with honeycomb ceramic substrate. It is experimentally found that the conversion efficiencies of TiO 2 /CoO based catalytic converter are 93%, 89% and 82% for NO x , CO and HC emissions respectively. It is calculated that the TiO 2 /CoO based catalytic converter reduces 24%, 41% and 40% higher NO x , CO and HC emissions in comparison to OEM catco respectively. The objective of this paper is to develop a low-cost three way catalytic converter to be used with the newly developed CNG-DI engine. Detailed review on catalytic converter, low-cost catalytic converter development characteristics and CNGDI engine test results have been presented with discussions.

The operational context for higher education institutions has become increasingly competitive: universities have to compete on national and international markets for students, staff, funding and prestige. In this context, universities have increasingly become to think of themselves as actors who are in direct competition with others, and adapt their strategies to increase their status and survive in the new environment. The possibly best-known approach to measuring the status of universities is through the various ranking lists. Though focusing on different indicators like scientific performance or reputation, ranking lists can be considered as a mechanism for highlighting and even creating status hierarchies and providing information about the "market value" of universities. They have also contributed to the proliferation of various national policy schemes fostering elite universities, which aim to redress the dominance of US universities in the ranking lists. An increasingly important funding source for universities is the EU Framework Programmes, where the European Commission funds basic and applied research with industrial and societal relevance. The aim of our chapter is to explore whether established university rankings in their current form are appropriate instruments for predicting the performance of universities in the EU Framework Programmes and whether university's status has an influence on its access to FP funding. To address this question, we analyse the relative influence of two different university rankings on the performance in the EU Framework Programmes, while controlling for other factors like previous experience, availability of national funding sources, university size, relational capital, and institutional factors (EU membership age and English language). N 132 132 127 132 127 124 132

A five-day international workshop was recently convened at the Université des Sciences et Techniques de Masuku in Gabon to enhance international collaboration among Central African, US and European scientists, conservation professionals and policy makers. The overall aims of the workshop were to: (1) discuss emerging priorities in biodiversity and conservation genetics research across Central Africa, and (2) create new networking opportunities among workshop participants. Here we provide a brief overview of the meeting, outline the major recommendations that emerged from it, and provide information on new networking opportunities through the meeting web site.

This study examines the research performance and international research collaborations (IRC) of ASEAN nations in the area of economics. Over the last 3 decades international collaborated papers have increased in the region, while locally-co-authored papers have declined. Singapore towered among ASEAN nations in research efficiency based on geographical area, population and GDP. Vietnam performed relatively better in research efficiency than research productivity (number of papers produced), while Indonesia performed poorly. Overall, internationally co-authored papers were cited twice as often as locally authored papers except that both The Philippines and Indonesia exhibited almost no difference in how their local and internationally co-authored papers were cited. The study also examined IRC from the perspective of social networks. Centrality had a strong correlation with research performance; however, vertex tie-strength (a result of repeat collaboration) showed maximum correlation with research performance. While Malaysia emerged as the nation with the highest betweenness centrality or ‘bridging’ power, the US emerged as the most favoured international partner of ASEAN nations. However, collaboration between ASEAN countries accounted for just 4 % of all international collaborations. Increased academic mobility and more joint scientific works are suggestions to consider to boost educational co-operation among the ASEAN nations.

This article explores how five international colleagues from the USA, Canada, China, and Japan use self-study methodologies and online journaling to systematically examine the tensions surrounding the lived experiences of feminist academics in diverse global contexts. It draws from the theoretical foundations of critical qualitative inquiry, self-study, feminist epistemologies, and fiction as research. The main research questions guiding the study are: what is the role of self-study and journaling in an international research collective?, how can contemporary literature inform a self-study about the intersection of gender and career?, and in what ways does journaling with international partners support personal and professional development of multicultural teacher educators?. For 6 months, the authors explored these questions with one another in an interactive online journal. Collaborative analysis of the journal entries produced three major themes: fiction as self-study, scholarship as hope, and scholarship as freedom. The article concludes with the authors’ personal views on the importance of online journaling and self-study among educational researchers who are interested in finding tools and structures for navigating the contemporary women’s movement within academia.

This article presents findings on international research collaboration from a National Science Foundation-funded study with 83 faculty in science and engineering (S&E) who returned to India after studying and working in the United States. These faculty members were brought up in the Indian socio-cultural context, but they were professionalized in the scientific culture of Western academia. When they returned to India to take a faculty position, they knew collaborators in the US with desired skills, including their advisors. Yet, returned Indian migrant faculty face significant challenges in establishing successful international research collaboration with their American peers. Interestingly, this is not the case with collaborators from Europe and other parts of the world with whom they had little connection before moving to India. Findings show some inequities that exist between scientists and engineers in the US and India that pertain to resources and attitudes towards collaboration.

This paper describes the interview study investigating the network formation and dynamics of knowledge production within EU Framework Programme funded R&D projects. Drawing from seven projects in EU"s New and Emerging Science and Technology programme (NEST) in the Sixth Framework Programme, this qualitative study explores how the partnerships in EU-funded R&D collaboration projects are formed and dissolved, what motivates individuals and organisations for collaboration or non-collaboration with certain partners, and how knowledge production and learning takes place in the inter-organisational collaboration projects. The aim of this paper is to record the research design and present the internal collaboration rules extracted from the studied cases, as well as to formulate a set of stylised rules for the purposes of the NEMO"s agent based model (SKEIN).

This qualitative study investigates different perceptions of knowledge sharing in a cross- cultural research collaboration between German and Chinese scientists. Special emphasis is placed on the in-group and out-group orientation of partners, different communication styles and personal and organizational influence factors. Data was obtained by conducting six focus groups in Germany and China. All ideas expressed in these focus groups were categorized and thoroughly evaluated. Our analysis reveals that the in- and out-group orientation of collectivistic and individualistic cultures might not be as pronounced as theory would suggest. In fact, members of the more collectivistic Chinese culture even showed a higher out-group orientation than members of the more individualistic German culture in our study. The resulting theoretical and practical implications for managing cross-cultural collaboration projects are discussed in detail in the paper.

Here is a written account of the archaeology summer school I have facilitated in early July, a collaboration in the field of comparative Mediterranean/Chinese early imperial material culture between Renmin University of China and the University of Geneva. This document summarises the project draft, elements of logistic coordination and a short description of practicals/lecturing/seminars delivered for the 10 MA and PHD students from Renmin University archaeology.

A photographic report of the workshop can be viewed on: https://archaeolinks.com/Renmin-UniGe_2018/

A B S T R A C T Reduction of global food insecurity depends upon the mobilization of genetic diversity for agricultural research and innovation. Yet increased regulation of genetic materials is profoundly affecting the way agricultural research is conducted, particularly international research that requires access to diverse germplasm. This study draws from an international survey of researchers in USAID Feed the Future Innovation Labs to understand how regulations affect access, exchange and use of genetic material within an international collaborative research environment. Although the effects of regulation depend on the research context – crop, sector, collaborative relationships, country and institutional source – transaction costs are increasing and researchers are changing strategies to access genetic material. The new regulatory environment is merging a traditional informal exchange system, perceived to be more open, with a more formal system that sets rules on access and use of genetic materials to address social, economic and environmental goals.

This paper explores the use of social media or Web 2.0 services for an international collaborative project. Participants in this collaboration used free and inexpensive social media tools to communicate and work together. This case study presents a model for using inexpensive social media tools to forge new partnerships among academic libraries. Academic libraries can now tap the expertise of fellow librarians in other countries and explore new cultures to improve and extend their services without the huge financial cost once attributed to international collaboration.

As a response to intensified globalization, international research collaboration has become common in the social sciences. This paper reports a study that examined what Chinese management academics and their overseas counterparts perceived to be the benefits and challenges arising from research collaboration with each other. Data collected with two parallel questionnaires administered, respectively, to 114 Chinese and 30 overseas management academics revealed a variety of perceived benefits relating mainly to Chinese and overseas academics' complementing strengths. Analysis of the same data also identified an array of perceived challenges stemming from a combination of cultural, epistemological, ideological, linguistic, institutional, and relational differences. Our study generated insights to be drawn upon in policy-making and in the coordination of international research collaboration.

A fundamental problem in the field of the social studies of science is how to
measure the patterns of international scientific collaboration to analyse the structure and
evolution of scientific fields. This study here confronts the problem by developing an
allometric model of morphological changes in order to measure and analyse the relative
growth of international research collaboration in comparison with domestic collaboration
only for fields of science. Statistical analysis, based on data of internationally co-authored
papers from National Science Foundation (1997–2012 period), shows an acceleration (a
disproportionate relative growth) of collaboration patterns in medical sciences, social
sciences, geosciences, agricultural sciences, and psychology (predominantly applied
fields). By contrast, some predominantly basic fields, including physics and mathematics,
have lower levels of relative growth in international scientific collaboration. These characteristics
of patterns of international research collaboration seem to be vital contributing
factors for the evolution of the social dynamics and social construction of science. The
main aim of this article is therefore to clarify the on-going evolution of scientific fields that
might be driven by the plexus (interwoven combination of parts in a system) of research
disciplines, which generates emerging research fields with high growth rates of international
scientific collaboration.

The current work addresses one of the key building blocks towards an improved understanding of flood processes and associated changes in flood characteristics and regimes in Europe: the development of a comprehensive, extensive European flood database. The presented work results from ongoing cross-border research collaborations initiated with data collection and joint interpretation in mind. A detailed account of the current state, characteristics and spatial and temporal coverage of the European Flood Database, is presented.

The current work addresses one of the key building blocks towards an improved understanding of flood processes and associated changes in flood characteristics and regimes in Europe: the development of a comprehensive, extensive European flood database. The presented work results from ongoing cross-border research collaborations initiated with data collection and joint interpretation in mind. A detailed account of the current state, characteristics and spatial and temporal coverage of the European Flood Database, is presented. At this stage, the hydrological data collection is still growing and consists at this time of annual maximum and daily mean discharge series, from over 7000 hydrometric stations of various data series lengths. Moreover, the database currently comprises data from over 50 different data sources. The time series have been obtained from different national and regional data sources in a collaborative effort of a joint European flood research agreement based on the e...

The Department of Biomedical Engineering, at the Faculty of Engineering, University of Malaya was established in the 1997/1998 academic session with an intake of 20 students and five academic staff. The Department has undergone numerous changes in the structure of its degree programme, with each one of them recognised and fully accredited by the Engineering Accreditation Council and Ministry of Higher Education. The Department has played an active role at national and global levels, in the areas of biomedical engineering education and research collaboration. Several initiatives have been planned to ensure the Department stays at the forefront of disseminating biomedical engineering innovations in Malaysia.

Economic globalization and advances in technology have made it more feasible and even necessary to develop international research collaborations in global public health. Historically, collaborations in global research described in the literature have been mostly “North-South” collaborations in which the more developed “North” country works together with a developing “South” country to conduct research in the latter. This type of collaboration has for the most part, represented unequal partnership and rarely left behind a lasting impact. Recently, the opportunity for a new kind of international research partnership has emerged in which the host country has significant financial resources, but relatively limited expertise in research methodology or techniques and research implementation. This type of collaboration features a relative equalization of power between the international partners. The purpose of this paper is to describe the process of building a successful research collaboration between a team in the United States and a team in Qatar, a rich Arabic nation in Gulf. We present a case study that provides an overview of our own project focused on the development of a culturally and linguistically adapted health care quality instrument for Qatar, discussing many of the benefits and challenges we encountered during each phase of instrument development. We present recommendations for researchers seeking sustainable and equitable partnerships with the Arab World.

The aim of this study was to investigate the collaboration pattern of Uzbekistan with researchers from other countries. A bibliographic approach was used to examine the collaboration patterns of Uzbekistan authors. To conduct this research, the Scopus database was used to download bibliographic records of articles published by Uzbekistan authors. In descending order, the most frequent countries of collaboration were: and Kazakhstan. Collaboration with Russia, the most frequent country of collaboration, steadily increased since the year 2000. In recent years, Uzbekistan collaborated more with East Asian countries, perhaps due to advancements in science and technology. The results suggest that Uzbekistan authors show a tendency to collaborate more with countries that are strong socioeconomically , advanced in science and technology, and close geographically.

Contemporary science is marked by expanding and diverse forms of teamwork. Collaboration across organizational and cultural boundaries extends the possibilities of discovery. International collaborative research projects often provide findings beyond what one team could achieve alone. Motivated to maintain existing relationships and grow their scientific network, researchers increasingly collaborate, despite often unrecognized or underappreciated costs, since such projects are challenging to manage and carry out. Rarely studied in-depth and longitudinally, the perspectives of scientific team members are crucial to better understand the dynamics of durable collaboration networks. Thus, this retrospective case study of a sociology of science project applies the novel method of autoethnography to examine teamwork benefits, motivations, and challenges. Key challenges found include spatial distance and differences of culture, language, and career stage. This study, spanning North America, Europe, the Middle East, and East Asia, focused on col-laborators' characteristics and evolving perceptions of team dynamics over a decade.

This article focuses on the impact of international research collaboration on individual research productivity in 11 European countries. Research productivity and international publication co-authorship of "internationalists" and "locals" (or academics collaborating and not collaborating internationally) are compared. The article uses a micro-level (individual) approach and relies on the primary data collected in a comparable format through a survey from 17,211 European academics. In all countries and all clusters of academic fields studied, international collaboration in research is strongly correlated with substantially higher research productions. Internationalization increasingly plays a stratifying role, though: More international collaboration tends to mean higher publishing rates and those who do not collaborate internationally may be losing more than ever before in terms of resources and prestige in the process of "accumulative disadvantage." The competition is becoming a permanent feature of the European research landscape, and local prestige combined with local publications may no longer suffice in the race for resources and academic recognition. Cross-disciplinary and cross-national differences apply but our study shows a powerful role of internationalization of research for both individual research productivity and the competitiveness of national research outputs.

A five-day international workshop was recently convened at the Université des Sciences et Techniques de Masuku in Gabon to enhance international collaboration among Central African, US and European scientists, conservation professionals and policy makers. The overall aims of the workshop were to:(1) discuss emerging priorities in biodiversity and conservation genetics research across Central Africa, and (2) create new networking opportunities among workshop participants. Here we provide a brief overview of the ...

At the time the US National Committee for the International Union of Psychological Science convened the previous workshop in 2006, important discussions were also taking place regarding international research collaborations in science and engineering (S&E) more broadly.

Economic globalization and advances in technology have made it more feasible and even necessary to develop international research collaborations in global public health. Historically, collaborations in global research described in the literature have been mostly "North-South" collaborations in which the more developed "North" country works together with a developing "South" country to conduct research in the latter. This type of collaboration has for the most part, represented unequal partnership and rarely left behind a lasting impact. Recently, the opportunity for a new kind of international research partnership has emerged in which the host country has significant financial resources, but relatively limited expertise in research methodology or techniques and research implementation. This type of collaboration features a relative equalization of power between the international partners. The purpose of this paper is to describe the process of building a successful research collaboration between a team in the United States and a team in Qatar, a rich Arabic nation in Gulf. We present a case study that provides an overview of our own project focused on the development of a culturally and linguistically adapted health care quality instrument for Qatar, discussing many of the benefits and challenges we encountered during each phase of instrument development. We present recommendations for researchers seeking sustainable and equitable partnerships with the Arab World.

The Circumpolar Indigenous Pathways to Adulthood (CIPA) study brought together researchers from five different universities, working in five different regions of the Arctic, to explore arctic indigenous-youth resilience utilizing collaborative and participatory approaches. This paper focuses on outcomes from the collaboration of two sites in the project and presents findings from a culminating cross-site workshop that engaged indigenous youth and community members, along with university researchers of various disciplines and backgrounds, in a cultural exchange of knowledge and practice. While our main goal for the study was to reveal processes and factors underlying indigenous-youth resilience, we learned much about the processes and factors contributing to resilience in research collaborations as well. Our findings suggest indigenous research methodologies may contribute towards the development of resilient collaborations with potential to bring about transformative outcomes for indigenous-community members engaged in research.

Bioactive compound is secondary plant metabolites eliciting pharmacological or toxicological effects in man and animals. Legumes are valuable source of proteins and nutrients for the majority of the world population. Vigna mungo is one of the important legume crop extensively cultivated in India and other parts of the world. Pulses and legumes have been gaining interest because they are excellent source of bioactive compounds. Objective of this present review is to compile all relevant information published regarding bioactive components from the Vigna mungo. Various bioactive components reported in Vigna mungo were found and it includes flavonoids, isoflavonoids, phytoestrogens, phenolic acids, enzymes, fibres, starches, trypsin inhibitors, phytic acid, lectins, saponins, tocopherols, fatty acids and proteins. This review clearly demonstrates that Vigna mungo is rich in bioactive components and these components are located in various organs of the plant.

A five-day international workshop was recently convened at the Université des Sciences et Techniques de Masuku in Gabon to enhance international collaboration among Central African, US and European scientists, conservation professionals and policy makers. The overall aims of the workshop were to:(1) discuss emerging priorities in biodiversity and conservation genetics research across Central Africa, and (2) create new networking opportunities among workshop participants. Here we provide a brief overview of the ...

We provide a synthesis of what regional scientific research networks in less developed regions of the world can do and why they might be relevant for societal decisions and practice. We do so through a focus on three regional science network initiatives that aim to enhance understanding of the multiscalar dynamics of global environmental change (GEC) regionally and globally, namely the Southern Africa Regional Science Initiative (SAFARI 2000), the Large-Scale Biosphere-Atmosphere Experiment in Amazonia (LBA), and the Inter-American Institute for Global Change (IAI). With a view to aiding future efforts at regional research network formation, we assess whether and how these three networks enhanced regional science, and the extent to which they sought and managed to bridge the science-policy gap that challenges GEC science as a whole. Identifying key decisions and attributes bearing on their successes, the analysis attends specifically to how the three networks sought to build capacity, how differences and similarities between them affected their level of autonomy from governments, and how this and other factors influenced their functioning and achievements.

A fundamental problem in the field of the social studies of science is how to
measure the patterns of international scientific collaboration to analyse the structure and
evolution of scientific fields. This study here confronts the problem by developing an
allometric model of morphological changes in order to measure and analyse the relative
growth of international research collaboration in comparison with domestic collaboration
only for fields of science. Statistical analysis, based on data of internationally co-authored
papers from National Science Foundation (1997–2012 period), shows an acceleration (a
disproportionate relative growth) of collaboration patterns in medical sciences, social
sciences, geosciences, agricultural sciences, and psychology (predominantly applied
fields). By contrast, some predominantly basic fields, including physics and mathematics,
have lower levels of relative growth in international scientific collaboration. These characteristics
of patterns of international research collaboration seem to be vital contributing
factors for the evolution of the social dynamics and social construction of science. The
main aim of this article is therefore to clarify the on-going evolution of scientific fields that
might be driven by the plexus (interwoven combination of parts in a system) of research
disciplines, which generates emerging research fields with high growth rates of international
scientific collaboration.
Keywords International research