Collaborative nano research

The journal, Nature, published a study about a trend towards collaborative nanotechnology research in its Dec. 2, 2010 online edition (Note: There’s a paywall and I don’t usually link to articles behind them).  From the Dec. 9, 2010 news item on Nanowerk,

Despite their initial focus on national economic competitiveness, the nanotechnology research initiatives now funded by more than 60 countries have become increasingly collaborative, with nearly a quarter of all papers co-authored by researchers across borders.

Researchers from the two leading producers of nanotechnology papers – China and the United States – have become each nation’s most frequent international co-authors. Though Chinese and U.S. researchers now publish roughly the same number of nanotechnology papers, the U.S. retains a lead in the quality of publications – as measured by the number of early citations.

“Despite ten years of emphasis by governments on national nanotechnology initiatives, we find that patterns of nanotechnology research collaboration and funding transcend country boundaries,” said Phillip Shapira, study co-author and a professor in the School of Public Policy at the Georgia Institute of Technology. “For example, we found that U.S. and Chinese researchers have developed a relatively high level of collaboration in nanotechnology research. Each country is the other’s leading collaborator in nanotechnology R&D.”

I’m not convinced that the number of early citations is a good indicator of quality and I have a couple questions. First, are papers published in prestigious journals like Science, Nature, etc. more likely to be cited early? Also, are the Chinese papers being published in English or in Chinese first?

Despite my reservations about this ‘quality issue’, I do find the research quite illuminating. More from the news item,

They [the study’s authors] found that although researchers from 152 nations were represented in the survey, just 15 countries represented 90 percent of the papers. The top four countries by author affiliation were the United States (23 percent), China (22 percent), Germany (8 percent) and Japan (8 percent). Papers authored by researchers from more than one nation – which constituted 23 percent of those examined – were assigned to more than one country.

Though the United States and China now produce approximately the same number of papers, the U.S. maintains significant advantages.

“Compared with Chinese counterparts, papers authored by U.S. researchers still have a substantial lead in terms of citation quality and U.S. corporate activity in nanotechnology innovation remains rather larger,” Shapira said. “However, Chinese quality is improving and an increasing number of Chinese companies are becoming engaged in developing and commercializing nano-enabled products.”

Shapira and study collaborator Jue Wang, an assistant professor at Florida International University, had some other interesting findings,

The study also found that sponsors concentrating their funding in fewer institutions had lower research impact as measured by early citation counts.

“Our starting hypothesis is that when groups from multiple institutions vie for funding, there is increased competition, review processes are less partial, and there are more opportunities to select the most improving projects,” Shapira explained.

With increasing budget pressures, growth in nanotechnology funding appears unlikely. How should countries invest their limited funding for greatest benefit?

“One way would be to foster more high-quality international collaborations, perhaps by opening funding competitions to international researchers and by offering travel and mobility awards for domestic researchers to increase alliances with colleagues in other countries,” the researchers suggested in their paper.

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