Rice University's Baker Institute for Public Policy has released a new study, according to which US researchers who collaborate with international scientists are more likely to have their work cited than peers who do not utilise overseas expertise. US collaborators with international scientists are also more likely to receive greater recognition and produce work with greater impact, the study noted.
The study, 'International Stem Cell Collaboration: How Disparate Policies Between the United States and the United Kingdom Impact Research,' was authored by Kirstin Matthews, a fellow in science and technology policy at the Baker Institute. The findings were published this week in the open access online journal, PLoS ONE.
For their study, Matthews and co-investigators analysed data in the biosciences area - specifically papers on stem cell research - published in 2008 by US and UK scientists. The goal was to see if scientists from these two countries that supposedly have vibrant biomedical research programmes gained anything from collaborating with peers in other countries.
US-independent articles averaged 15.0 citations, while international publications listing a US scientist as the corresponding author averaged 20.3 citations. A similar trend was seen with UK-independent publications (10.1) compared with international publications (13.8).
While the citation rate was slightly increased for international papers on which a US scientist was a secondary author, this difference was not found to be statistically significant. This seems to indicate that it is not as beneficial for US authors to be secondary contributors.
A literature search of 2008 publications on stem cells generated 3,176 articles that listed at least one US scientist as an author and a total of 616 papers that listed at least one UK scientist as an author. While US researchers published more than five times more often than UK researchers in absolute numbers, the publication rates per million inhabitants were very similar - 10.2 articles per million individuals for the US and 10.0 articles per million individuals for the UK.
Overall, the UK collaborates the most with US researchers. For the US, the top three collaborators were Germany, Japan and the UK, says the report.
Matthews' research team included Rice University senior Jingyuan Luo, who is a biochemistry and policy studies major, a Marshall Scholar and co-author on the paper.
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