The Royal Society, the UK's independent scientific academy, has published a new study entitled UK Research and the European Union: The Role of the EU in Researcher Collaboration and Mobility. According to the finding of this new study, if the UK chooses to exit the Union (EU) it will affect the mobility of UK-based scientists and their collaborations. The Intellectual Property & Science business of Thomson Reuters was commissioned to provide supporting data and analysis for the study, contributing detailed information on global trends in collaboration and mobility from its Web of Science® platform.
On June 23, 2016, a referendum on the UK's continued membership of the EU will be held, potentially resulting in the country's exit from the EU. Colloquially referred to as a 'Brexit,' the decision could have a major impact on both the UK and the EU, with a number of studies projecting potential economic impacts of that decision. The purpose of the Royal Society's new study is to gather evidence about the influence of the EU on scientific research collaboration, and mobility in order to inform debate. A previous study examined the role of the EU in funding UK research, bringing together the most up to date facts and figures about the finances and a third study, also published, examines the influence of the EU on regulation and policy that governs UK research.
Key findings of the Thomson Reuters analysis conducted for the Royal Society reveal that UK researchers are collaborating internationally more frequently. Of the 1.6 million research papers published by UK authors between 2005 and 2014, 36.8 percent were internationally co-authored. This compares with roughly 90 percent of UK research papers including only UK authors in 1981. The growth in global collaboration has been accompanied by a 3x surge in total research output over the same period. Finding further note that when normalized by total volume of research output, Germany is the most frequent collaborative partner for UK researchers, followed by France, Italy, and the Netherlands. On an absolute basis, the US is the most frequent collaborator with UK researchers.
EU funding shows a similar degree of international collaboration (50%) as UK funding (49%), however some EU funding streams result in much higher levels of international co-authorship. 58% of European Research Council (ERC) funded UK papers have international co-authors. For both papers published by UK-only authors and UK-EU co-authored papers, those acknowledging EU funding have more impact than the average paper, and where that funding comes from the ERC in particular, papers have the highest impact of all.
The full study, UK Research and the European Union: The Role of the EU in Researcher Collaboration and Mobility, was published by the Royal Society on June 6, 2016. Scientific literature citation data and analysis in the study was powered by Thomson Reuters Web of Science.
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