The strength of international scientific ties: a novel analysis of inter-Country coautorship

The aim of this work is to highlight the strongest inter-country scientific collaborations and the factors that drive them, also in order to offer policy suggestions. The experimental activity performed in this context exploits a less common methodology, preferred to other ones due to its ability to better resolve collaborations. It calculates in fact a powerful indicator, the Probabilistic Affinity Index, starting from the internationally coauthored scientific products of the 100 most scientifically productive Countries. The Probabilistic Affinity Index is able to measure the strength of a collaboration without being influenced by the scientific production of a Country. Once assessed the strength of collaboration, networks of the strongest ones are built using Network Analysis instruments. While results substantially confirm most of the past findings on factors driving scientific collaboration, they also show previously unseen strong collaboration paths existing between Countries. At the end of the paper policy suggestions are drawn.