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The roles of geographic distance and socioeconomic factors on international collaboration among ecologists

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Abstract

The number of authors from different countries have recently increased in ecology papers, but the international collaboration among ecologists does not occur in an idiosyncratic way. In this paper, we quantified the level of international collaboration in ecology papers and the influence of geographic distance and socioeconomic factors on collaboration between countries. We obtained all papers from Thomson-ISI, classified as subject ecology between years 2000 and 2014 (total of 62,667 papers with international collaboration in 179 countries). The gravity model (binomial negative model) indicated that the level of international collaboration is moderate spatially structured, decreasing as the geographical distance among countries increase. Moreover, the geographic distance and socioeconomic factors explained 10% of the scientific collaboration among countries (Pseudo R 2 = 0.10). Highly collaborative countries were found in similar trade blocs, with similar Human Development Index, similar scientific structure (i.e., number of citation per documents) and tended to be geographically close. Thus, international collaboration will continue increasing, and young ecologists will experience international collaboration, even with distant countries (both geographical and socioeconomic).

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Acknowledgements

MRP and KBM received a scholarship from Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior (CAPES). Our work on ecology and experience in scientific collaboration has been continuously supported by different grants: Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico (CNPq) (Project No. 563834/2010-2), CAPES (Science without border-PVE A100/2013), and National Institutes for Science and Technology (INCT) in Ecology, Evolution and Biodiversity Conservation, supported by MCTIC/CNPq (proc. 465610/2014-5) and FAPEG. RL received a scholarship from Science without border program (CAPES). JAFD-F and JCN were supported by CNPq productivity fellowships.

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  1. All authors contributed equally to this work.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Universidade Estadual de Goiás, Campus de Ciências Exatas e Tecnológicas, Anápolis, Goiás, Brazil

    Micael Rosa Parreira & João Carlos Nabout

  2. Departamento de Ecologia, ICB, Universidade Federal de Goiás, Campus Samambaia, Goiânia, Goiás, Brazil

    Karine Borges Machado & José Alexandre Felizola Diniz-Filho

  3. Department of Marine Biology and Oceanography, Institut de Ciències del Mar (CSIC), Barcelona, Catalonia, Spain

    Ramiro Logares

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  1. Micael Rosa Parreira
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Parreira, M.R., Machado, K.B., Logares, R. et al. The roles of geographic distance and socioeconomic factors on international collaboration among ecologists. Scientometrics 113, 1539–1550 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-017-2502-z

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