A recent evaluation of co-authorship in scientific publications indicates that the United States might be losing its preeminent status in the worldwide research framework. The document mentions that the US ‘seems to be in a downward trend as a research ally’, while scientists in other regions are establishing collaborations more swiftly with peers from different nations.
These insights stem from scholars at Clarivate’s Institute of Scientific Information who examined decades-worth of authorship metrics for articles indexed by Web of Science (WoS) to discern patterns in global research cooperation.
In general, the researchers observe that the annual output of scientific papers is on the rise – a progression that has persisted for many years. Furthermore, an increasing share of these papers is being co-authored by contributors from multiple countries. There is also a visible trend towards more extensive international collaborations, with the Clarivate group noting a move away from two-way partnerships to initiatives involving participants from various nations.
Mainland China stands as the sole area where the growth of local research activities has surpassed that of international collaborations – even though the aggregate number of papers from Chinese authors involved in broader international efforts continues to increase. In the year 2000, research personnel in mainland China published 26,200 articles in journals included in the WoS core collection. By 2024, this figure had escalated to 878,300. Of these, 163,230 were generated in collaboration with international colleagues, compared to only 6000 at the beginning of the century.
Global power transition
The Clarivate group also discerned collaboration patterns among researchers from the US, Europe, and China – the three regions that contribute the most publications annually.
Though there were peaks in international collaboration during the early years of the Covid-19 crisis, prevailing trends seem to indicate that partnerships between European and Chinese authors are expanding at a pace quicker than those between European and US researchers. Concurrently, collaborations between US and Chinese scholars have sharply declined since 2019.
In total paper counts, Chinese authors surpassed their American peers in publications for the first time in 2020, and this disparity has significantly widened in subsequent years.
When the data is adjusted for research influence (accounting for the frequency of citations), it highlights the rising caliber of research being conducted in China. Collaborations involving US and European researchers are shown to gain advantages from partnering with Chinese researchers. Although papers solely authored by Chinese contributors are increasingly noted for their impact, the overall influence of papers authored exclusively by US contributors seems to be diminishing.
The report also observes that researchers from Africa, Asia-Pacific, Latin America, and the Middle East are increasingly collaborating with peers in mainland China. While the US remains the preferred partner across all regions except Asia, the ratio of papers authored in collaboration with US researchers appears to be on the decline in all areas. For instance, nearly 12% of articles published by researchers from the Asia-Pacific region from 2015–2019 resulted from collaborations with US partners; by 2020–2024, this number had dropped to around 9%. In the same timeframe, the share of papers published with Chinese colleagues increased from 4.5% to 5.3%.
‘The US research base no longer seems as competitive in global performance as it once was,’ the report’s authors express. ‘The data indicate that the US gains substantial academic advantages from collaborative endeavors, which have produced its most successful research output. Therefore, a decline in these partnerships would further harm US research.’
‘The US seems to be in decline as a research partner: its growth has stagnated; its citation impact is diminishing; it may be relinquishing its dominant edge in global research,’ they add. ‘Recent policy declarations regarding its international connections suggest adverse repercussions for its future research landscape and for global networks.’
A transformed research environment
Marek Kwiek, a specialist in international academic collaboration from Adam Mickiewicz University in Poland, asserts that the report presents ‘a new reality of global research on the horizon’. ‘Perhaps the most remarkable transformation is the rising significance of mainland China in global research collaboration, contrasted with the US’s dwindling role,’ he notes. ‘To some degree, the shifts in research collaboration reflect global geopolitical frictions and national policies in the US. Notably, the US is progressively losing its globally dominant research position amid the rapid growth of mainland China in both quantity and particularly in the quality of research output.’
Kwiek highlights that the report ‘validates trends in global research collaboration of which we are already cognizant’, adding that ‘policy initiatives’ in both China and the US play a crucial role. ‘Mainland China is characterized in the report as being on track “to become a major technological economy, supported by existing research and increasing investment in life sciences and health”,’ he adds. ‘The report illustrates a global research collaboration landscape in which both China and the EU are gaining traction and