Department of Civil Engineering, University of Debrecen, Debrecen, Hungary.
Department of Science Policy and Scientometrics, Library and Information Centre of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, Budapest, Hungary.
PLoS One. 2020 Nov 16;15(11):e0242468. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0242468. eCollection 2020.
Science is becoming increasingly international in terms of breaking down walls in its pursuit of high impact. Despite geographical location and distance still being major barriers for scientific collaboration, little is known about whether high-impact collaborations are similarly constrained by geography compared to collaborations of average impact. To address this question, we analyze Web of Science (WoS) data on international collaboration between global leader cities in science production. We report an increasing intensity of international city-city collaboration and find that average distance of collaboration of the strongest connections has slightly increased, but distance decay has remained stable over the last three decades. However, high-impact collaborations span large distances by following similar distance decay. This finding suggests that a larger geographical reach of research collaboration should be aimed for to support high-impact science. The creation of the European Research Area (ERA) represents an effective action that has deepened intracontinental research collaborations and the position of the European Union (EU) in global science. Yet, our results provide new evidence that global scientific leaders are not sufficiently collaborative in carrying out their big science projects.
科学在追求高影响力方面，其国际合作日益紧密。尽管地理位置和距离仍然是科学合作的主要障碍，但对于高影响力的合作是否与平均影响力的合作一样受到地理因素的限制，人们知之甚少。为了解决这个问题，我们分析了科学产出方面的全球领先城市之间的国际合作的 Web of Science (WoS) 数据。我们报告了国际城市间合作的强度不断增加，并且发现最强联系的合作平均距离略有增加，但在过去三十年中距离衰减保持稳定。然而，高影响力的合作通过遵循相似的距离衰减来跨越较大的距离。这一发现表明，应该追求更大的地理研究合作范围，以支持高影响力的科学。欧洲研究区（ERA）的创建代表了一项有效的行动，它深化了欧洲大陆内部的研究合作以及欧盟在全球科学中的地位。然而，我们的研究结果提供了新的证据，表明在开展重大科学项目方面，全球科学领导者的合作还不够充分。
