The share of international co-publications is increasing

The number of international co-publications increased from 25 to 49 per cent in the last twenty years in Finland. In tandem with international co-authorship becoming more common, there has been an increase in the relative share of national cooperation between research organisations.

This information is based on a study titled International Co-authorship in Finland, as the material of which was used publications and their citation counts in Thomson Reuters’ international Web of Science (WoS) publication and citation database in 1990–2009. This study offers the most comprehensive picture of trends in Finnish international co-authorship so far.

The study indicates that the more international a publication is, the higher its impact. In 1990–2008, international co-publications were on average cited more times than publications produced in national cooperation. The citation counts of international co-publications exceeded the average world level throughout this period.

A growing trend is seen in cooperation involving researchers from more than one country group in addition to Finland. The more country groups that were involved in a publication, the higher its citation count on average. In Finland’s international co-publications, the co-authors were most frequently based in Europe excluding the Nordic countries. The second highest number of co-authors in international publications was from North America, and the third most common co-authors came from the Nordic countries.

The share of single-author publications has been declining in the last twenty years. As an exception to most main scientific disciplines, single authorship remained clearly the most typical form of international authorship in humanities journals in 2006–2009.

International co-publishing in Finland, Reports of the Ministry of Education and Culture, Finland 2012:19