The impacts of international collaboration on research performance have been extensively explored in the last two decades. Most research, however, focuses on quantity and citation-based indicators. Utilizing the turnover of keywords, this study develops an integrative approach tracking and visualizing the shift of the research stream and tests it within the context of U.S.-China collaboration in nanotechnology. The results find evidence in support of the linkage between the emergence of new research stream of Chinese researchers with the event of U.S.-China collaboration. It also finds that the triggered research stream diffused further via extended coauthorship. Policy implications for both the U.S. and China science and technology development and resource allocation are discussed in the end.
Author(s): Li Tang and Guangyuan Hu
Organization(s): Shanghai University of Finance and Economics
Source: Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology
Year: 2013