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The limits to internationalization of scientific research collaboration

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Abstract

This study analyses international research collaboration for eight science-based technologies in the Netherlands for the period 1988–2004. It is found that the share of international research collaborations in research collaboration is high, but not rising during the period investigated. This result suggests that the process of internationalization has reached an end. It is also found that collaboration between academic and non-academic organizations is less likely to take place at the international level than collaboration between academic organizations. This suggests that collaborating within national research systems helps academia, firms and governmental organizations to overcome differences in norms, values and incentives. Nonetheless, international collaboration between academic and non-academic organizations is also frequently occurring. Some consider these collaborations as undesirable, insofar academic research funded domestically is ‘leaking’ to foreign firms in such research collaborations. Such unwanted knowledge spillovers has lead some to plea for a ‘technology-nationalism’ in science policy instead of a ‘techno-globalization’. An analysis of the ‘balance of trade’ in international collaborations between Dutch academia and foreign firms and between Dutch firms and foreign academia shows that fears for unwanted knowledge spillovers are unfounded.

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Notes

  1. Based on the so-called OST-INPI/FhG-ISI technology classification.

  2. Tested by t-tests on differences in shares.

  3. Note that in case of information technology there seems to be a rather strange sudden drop of the share of international collaboration in 1995. We were not able to find another explanation than the relative low number of total collaborations in information technology, which make sudden shocks more likely to occur.

  4. The difference between probit and logit models lies in the underlying specification of function G. In logit models G is a logistic function and in probit models G is a standard normal cumulative distribution function (Wooldridge 2003).

  5. The fluctuations in the beginning of the period may be partly due to the smaller amount of observations in these years as compared to the more recent period.

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Acknowledgements

The author gratefully acknowledges comments on earlier versions of this paper from Koen Frenken, Jarno Hoekman, Frank van Oort, Otto Raspe and two anonymous referees.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Section of Economic Geography, Urban and Regional Research Centre Utrecht (URU), Faculty of Geosciences, Utrecht University, Utrecht, The Netherlands

    Roderik Ponds

  2. The Netherlands Institute for Spatial Research (RPB), P.O. Box 30314, 2500 GH, The Hague, The Netherlands

    Roderik Ponds

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Ponds, R. The limits to internationalization of scientific research collaboration. J Technol Transf 34, 76–94 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10961-008-9083-1

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