  It is well-established that the process of learning and capability building
is core to economic development and structural transformation. Since knowledge
is `sticky', a key component of this process is learning-by-doing, which can be
achieved via a variety of mechanisms including international research
collaboration. Uncovering significant inter-country research ties using Scopus
co-authorship data, we show that within-region collaboration has increased over
the past five decades relative to international collaboration. Further
supporting this insight, we find that while communities present in the global
collaboration network before 2000 were often based on historical geopolitical
or colonial lines, in more recent years they increasingly align with a simple
partition of countries by regions. These findings are unexpected in light of a
presumed continual increase in globalisation, and have significant implications
for the design of programmes aimed at promoting international research
collaboration and knowledge diffusion.
