International research collaboration among the G-20 countries

G-20 refers to an organization of 20 member countries/units founded in 1999. Over the years, it has become an important political and economic platform to address various developmental concerns. The member countries collectively represent about 75% of global population, 85% of the global gross domestic product and 75% of the global trade. Given that the G-20 has 88.8% of the world’s researchers and accounts for 93.2% of research spending and 90.6% of scientific publications at the global level, it would be interesting to analyse the international research collaboration patterns among the G-20 countries, including assessment of benefits and impact of such collaboration. The present study utilizes the publication data of these countries to estimate their collaborative research levels. A positive growth is observed in research collaboration along with a positive correlation with the national expenditure on R&D. Some countries (e.g. Saudi Arabia and South Africa) are found to have benefitted significantly from such colla­borative research, as observed by a boost in productivity and citations. The results comprehensively account for international research collaboration among the G-20 countries