FLICKR, KENNETH LUIn order for US research universities to remain competitive in today’s knowledge- and innovation-driven global economy, it is essential to expand research and scholarly collaborations and forge partnerships internationally. In recent years, the value of international collaboration has been increasingly emphasized by federal agencies, including the US Agency for International Development and the National Science Foundation (NSF), both of which now encourage more cross-border cooperation in science, technology, and education.
However, the 2012 NSF Science and Engineering Indicators report highlighted some concerns. As indicated in the report, two direct measures of international collaboration are coauthorship of research publications with foreign researchers and co-patents with foreign inventors. Over the past decade, the number of papers published by US researchers with international collaborators has remained relatively flat, increasing only at 1–2 percent each year. Breaking it down by country, the report showed that coauthorship with Chinese researchers has increased slightly, but coauthorship with scientists in other countries, such as Japan and Australia, has been declining. Our own analysis of peer-reviewed publications between 2007 and 2010 from Washington State University (WSU) and four other representative public research universities generated similar results.
Furthermore, the total number of patents filed ...
