Countries’ top five foreign collaborators by number of scientific publications, 2014–2016 and 2017–2019

Place your cursor over a country name on either the left (2014–2016) or right (2017–2019) circle to see its publishing network with its top partners and countries for which it is listed as a top five partner.
The text associated with a country name details the country’s total share of publications with foreign co-authors (with its top five partners and all others). Click on a country name to see only connections with its top five partners. Click again to return to the overview.
Place your cursor over a connection to read the number of collaborative publications involving those two country partners in the two-year period. Click on a connection in one circle to read the corresponding value in the other time period.

International collaboration is growing. At the global level, the rate of international scientific collaboration rose from 22% to 24% of scientific publications between 2015 and 2019, with wide variations among countries. Growth was fastest in high-income countries (from 30% to 35%).

In low-income countries, the level of international scientific collaboration remains high (from 72% to 70%). The modest ratios for China (23%) and India (19%) in 2019 () explain the lower average for upper middle-income and lower middle-income countries, respectively. Of note is that China has become one of India’s top five scientific partners (see chapter 22).

The relationships among countries are also changing, with early signs of a move towards greater intra-regional collaboration. For example, Brazil and Peru figure among Colombia’s top five scientific partners, for instance. Ghana became a top-five collaborator for Burkina Faso, Liberia and Sierra Leone in 2017–2019.

When examined by the volume of publishing output (number of scientific publications), some countries are also changing in their relative position. For example, China moved up to fourth place by volume of collaborative publications with top five partners in 2017–2019, from fifth place over 2014–2016. By contrast, Spain dropped from sixth to ninth place between the two periods.

For more, see The shifting landscape for scientific researchers

��ǳٱ�: The country associated with a scientific publication is based on the author(s’) affiliation(s).

Source: UNESCO Science Report: the Race Against Time for Smarter Development (2021); data sourced from Scopus (Elsevier), excluding Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences, by Science-Metrix and animated by Values Associates 