The Impact of country development on the visibility of co-authorship

The main aim of this study was to investigate the impact of country development on scientific collaboration and visibility. Based on the purpose the study we used scientometric method as our research methodology. The statistical population of the research included co-authored articlesin the Science Citation Index Expanded (SCIE) indexed in ISI from 2005 to 2006,along with their citations during 2005-2010. The results indicated that developing countries co-authored articles withdeveloped countries were cited at an average of 11.29 but developing countries coauthoredarticles with developed countries were cited at an average of 5.18. Also,there was a positive relation between the number of collaborating countries inarticles resulted from scientific collaboration and their citation rate. In investigatingthe significant differences among scientific collaboration patterns in developed anddeveloping countries, it was seen that the territorial or continental scientificcollaboration rate in developed countries is 3 times more than developing countriesand developed countries scientific collaboration with other developed countries was11 times more than developing countries scientific collaboration with otherdeveloping countries. This showed that researchers in developed countries ` had ahigh tendency to collaborate with their colleagues in developed countries, but therewas no relation between trans-territorial and national scientific collaboration indeveloped and developing countries. The average citation rate of international coauthorshiparticles was more than 1.8 times of the average citation rate of nationalco-authorship articles. The average citation rate of co-authored articles in developedcountries was 2 times more than of the average citation rate of co-authored articlesin developing countries. The results showed that international collaboration,especially collaboration with developed countries, increased the citation rate indeveloping countries articles; there were significant differences among scientificcollaboration patterns in developed and developing countries. It is recommendedthat the increase of international collaboration increases the international visibility ofthe articles.