Scientific collaborations within urban areas: the case of İstanbul

Scientific research has increasingly been becoming a group effort, which has been the main driving force in the growth of scientific productivity. While there have been multiple contributions toward intercity and interregional interactions in the analysis of these collaborations, intracity studies have been lagging. This study addresses this gap with the example of Istanbul, Turkey. Turkey has implemented a radical expansion policy in the spatial organization of universities after 2006 during which Istanbul has further strengthened its role as a science hub for the country. However, despite the increase in the number of universities and their personnel, the role of their collaborations in knowledge production has not been studied. In this setting, the study uses a gravity model for the measurement of Istanbul’s intracity collaborations in six research fields. The study measures intracity coauthorship chances by spatial proximity, domestic coauthorships, international coauthorships, institutional distance based on public-private university coauthorships and the difference between founding years. The results show that spatial proximity within the city is mostly relevant for soft science fields such as humanities and social sciences. In comparison, intracity coauthorships in hard science fields grow with domestic coauthorships beyond Istanbul. Additionally, coauthorships between public and private universities did not have a positive association with higher coauthorship chances while differences in founding years did not prevent the growth of coauthorships despite organisational differences between new and old universities.