Do foreign authors strengthen South Korea’s national research system?

National and international dynamics in Korea’s Triple Helix of scientific co-authorship relations

22nd October, 2010

Ki-Seok Kwon, Han Woo Park, Min-Ho So, and Loet Leydesdorff

The 8th Triple Helix Conference, 20th to 22nd October 2010 in Madrid, Spain

Contents Introduction Scientific Advancement through International

Collaboration Development of Korean Science System and

the role of Overseas Actors Data and Methods Results and Discussions Conclusions

Introduction The globalisation of science (Altbach, 2009) Triple Helix perspective of U-I-G relations

(Etzkowitz & Leydesdorff, 2000) Emerging role of overseas researchers in Japanese

national innovation system (Leydesdorff & Sun, 2009)

Rare research on the role of international cooperation in the development of science system experienced rapid catch-up (e.g. Korea and Taiwan), particularly, empirical investigation on international co-authorship

Research question: do foreign authors strengthen South Korea’s national research system?

Scientific Advancement through international collaboration Research collaboration is important for scientific

productivity (Ramsden, 1994, Lee & Bozeman, 2005; Adams et al., 2005).

In particular, many studies shows that international collaboration is a good predictor for academic excellence (Bordons et al., 1996; Van Raan, 1998; Smeby & Try, 2005; Abramo et al., 2009; Shin & Cummings; 2010).

The development of national science system may be related to international research collaboration (particularly, in a country with a rapid catch-up experience such as Korea) (e.g. Albuquerque, 2001).

Development of Korean Science System and the Role of Overseas Actors At the early catch-up stage, as other developing countries,

the main roles of the Korean academic system were limited to education. The US institutions have been the main actors providing highly-qualified researchers until now.

In terms of research activities, due to various government policy efforts, the university system expanded in the 1980s, and academic research was revitalized in the 1990s.

In particular, after economic crisis in 1997 in Korea accelerated the internationalisation . Moreover, participation in international research projects (e.g. HGP) has been started.

Very Recently, the government has strongly encouraged high-quality cooperative research at the international level through WCU (World Class University) and WCI (World Class Institute) programmes inviting prestigious international scholars.

Methods

Methods

Data The data were collected using the Web of

Science provided by the ISI of Thomson-Reuters. The dataset consists of 189,460 papers with at

least one Korean address were published in the ISI databases during 1968–2006.

Figure 1: Number of publications by domestic and foreign actors in Korea

DataFigure 2: Number of publications by domestic actors with foreign actors in Korea

- As high-quality academic research was encouraged in the late 1990s, the publications with overseas actors increased steadily- After a decrease in the mid-1990s, the share of papers co-authored with overseas actors grew from 21% in 1996 to 26% in 2006

ResultsFigure 3: Mutual information in trilateral domestic TH relations in Korea

-The longitudinal trend shows the reduction of uncertainty among U, I and G in the Korean publication system between 1970 and 1990- Mutual information among the three actors was relatively stable during the early 1990s, but decreased during the last ten years

-140

-120

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1960 1970 1980 1990 2000 2010

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2-year moving average

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liberalization

globalization

The trend line shows that the TH dynamics of UIG relations have varied considerably; this variation generally accords with changes in Korean government research policies (For details, see Park and Leydesdorff, 2009)

ResultsFigure 4: Mutual relations between university, industry, government, and overseas actors in the domain of articles with Korean addresses

-The trend line shows that mutual information in bilateral relations between university and foreign sectors has been in rapidly increasing since 1990- Government-foreign research collaboration (Tgf) is the second strongest, followed by industry-foreign relations (Tif) in the last decade

ResultsFigure 5: The mutual information in three and four dimensions among Korean articles

- The TH dynamics of UIGF relations varied considerably until the mid-1980s- Tuigf began to increase in 1987, but remained increasingly stable during the 1990s- However, there was some reduction of uncertainty among 4 actors during the mid-1990s- Overall, the system has been stable since 2001

Conclusions The significance of international authors in the

national TH system is growing due to changes in the knowledge environment. The interdependencies of complex technological changes and advances in scientific disciplines are rapidly increasing, and a competitive advantage can be secured through cooperative partnerships.

The findings of this research show that the effectiveness of national research capability can be boosted beyond the three national helices by including international relations into the perspective, and new developments can be driven at the network level.

Conclusions The Korean government has sought to strengthen the

national research system in order to narrow the wide gap separating it from Western countries after the mid-90s. This encouraged academics to publish internationally.

However, the government has comparatively neglected public interventions in fostering knowledge-based innovation capacities at the international level.

Very recently, a few policy measures in this line can be found in governmental programmes (e.g. WCU and WCI). However, more systematic efforts (e.g. encouragement of international research collaboration attracting foreign authors) are required in order to strengthen the national science system with regard to international system.