DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.7297121
title: Data and figures for "A half-century of global collaboration in science and the 'Shrinking World'"

description: This package supplements the paper entitled "A half-century of global collaboration in science and the 'Shrinking World'" published in Quantitative Science Studies (doi: 10.1162/qss_a_00268).
It contains the datasets and figures used in the original paper based on bibliometric data from a broad set of scientific publications (works), including journal articles, preprints and datasets; see the subfolder named "all_works".
In addition, for reference, it also contains datasets and figures based on bibliometric data from journal articles only; see the subfolder named "journal_only". The bottom-level files in this subfolder are suffixed with '_j' for identification.
 
Contents and Instructions
The datasets and figures in this package are based on the data obtained via OpenAlex API. See the original paper for details. The following file and folders are found at the next level of the subfolders named "all_works" or "journal_only".
 
- nworks_intlrate_master (.csv file)

This file contains information on the number of works ('nworks_all') produced in each of the 15 research disciplines ('discipline' and 'disc_ID'; see below) by 18 countries (Australia, Canada, China, France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Iran, Italy, Japan, Netherlands, Poland, Russia, South Korea, Spain, Switzerland, UK and US) ('country' and 'country_code') from 1970 to 2021 ('year'), the number of international collaborative works among them ('nworks_intl'), and the international collaboration rate ('intlrate') calculated from the ratio of the two.
The 15 disciplines are Artificial Intelligence ('disc_ID' = 1; 'ai'), Quantum Science (2; 'quantum'), Biotechnology (3; 'bio'), Nanotechnology (4; 'nano'), Agricultural Engineering (5; 'agri'), Particle Physics (6; 'particle'), Aerospace Engineering (7; 'aerospace'), Nuclear Engineering (8; 'nuclear'), Marine Engineering (9; 'marine'), Neuroscience (10; 'neuro'), Condensed Matter Physics (11; 'condensed'), Environmental Engineering (12; 'envi'), Earth Science (13; 'earth'), Astronomy (14; 'astro') and Pure Mathematics (15; 'math'). See the original paper for the definitions of these disciplines.
The figures contained in the folders '[line]_nworks' and '[line]_intlrate' are based on this dataset.
 
 - [line]_nworks (Folder)

This folder contains line plots (.pdf/.png) representing the trends in the number of works by discipline and country, corresponding to the left-hand side diagrams of Fig. 1 and Suppl. Fig. S2 in the v1 preprint.
 
- [line]_intlrate (Folder)

This folder contains line plots (.pdf/.png) representing the trends in the international collaboration rate by discipline and country, corresponding to the right-hand side diagrams of Fig. 1 and Suppl. Fig. S2 in the v1 preprint.
 
- [chord]_bilateral (Folder)

This folder contains chord diagrams (.pdf/.png) representing the bilateral collaborative relationships by discipline and period, corresponding to Fig. 2 and Suppl. Fig. S4 in the v1 preprint. The number at the end of the file name indicates the period represented by the diagram; specifically, '1' = 1971–1990, '2' = 1991–2000, '3' = 2001–2010 and '4' = 2011–2020.
The raw data (.xlsx) to reproduce the contained diagrams are also provided by discipline in the accompanied 'Data' folder. The file named '[list]_nworks_(discipline name).xlsx' shows, for the top 30 countries ('country' and 'country_code') in work production during the period indicated by the sheet name, their work production ('nworks_all'), the number of international collaborative works among them ('nworks_intl'), and the international collaboration rate ('intlrate') calculated from the ratio of the two. The file named '[mat]_bilat_nworks_(discipline name)' shows the number of works produced by each country pair during the period indicated by the sheet name. Country names are abbreviated by two-letter country codes (ISO 3166-1 alpha-2).
 
- [dend]_hcluster (Folder)

This folder contains circularised dendrograms (.pdf/.png) representing the international research collaboration clusters by discipline and period, corresponding to Fig. 3 and Suppl. Fig. S5 in the v1 preprint.
The raw data (.xlsx) to reproduce the contained diagrams are also provided by discipline in the accompanied 'Data' folder. The file named '[mat]_bilat_dist_(discipline name)' shows the distance between each country pair for the period indicated by the sheet name, calculated based on the formula presented in the original paper. Country names are abbreviated by two-letter country codes (ISO 3166-1 alpha-2).