International collaboration in scientific publications focusing on 'other low income countries' is analysed as it is reflected in the number of the publications that are internationally co-authored. The objective is to determine whether publication of research that is carried out in the 24 'other low income countries' is done in collaboration with research institutes from these countries. In addition, an attempt is made to find out whether collaboration in research in these countries follows any trends notably the extent of development of these countries and the number of universities and institutes of higher education present in each country. The material for the study is the Current ContentsTM database of peer-reviewed publications from more than 7000 journals in all sciences (Biology and environmental sciences; Physical, chemical and earth sciences; Engineering, computing and technology; Life sciences; Clinical medicine; Arts and humanities; Social and behavioral sciences) published between 1 January 1999 and 31 December 2000. In total 9,024 publications are obtained after a manual screening process and are analysed for collaboration within and between the countries and the science categories, in an Excel workbook with formulae. The results show that, in 75% of the publications there is lack of collaboration with local research institutions in the 'other low income countries' on which the research focuses and that the above percentage varies across the science categories. In addition, it is found that mainly research institutions from the most industrialised countries are the ones that publish without collaborating with local research institutions. Collaboration is found not to be dependent on the extent of development and nor on the number of universities and institutions of higher education in the 'other low income countries'. Responses to a questionnaire survey carried out among authors in the Current ContentsTM database show a contradiction between what authors claim to be in support of and what they actually do when they carryout research in the 'other low income countries'. There are a number of moral and/or societal arguments that can be used to improve co-authorship. |
