The relationship between research performance and international collaboration in chemistry

The number of internationally co-authored articles have significantly increased in recent years and now receive more citations than domestic works. Abramo et al. (Scientometrics 86:629-643, 2011b) investigated scholars in Italian universities and found a positive correlation between their research performance and degree of internationalization. This study uses a data set in chemistry to examine the robustness of the results presented by Abramo et al. (Scientometrics 86:629-643, 2011b) and the relationship between international collaboration and mobility among researchers. The results confirmed the robustness of the previous study and raised the possibility that the higher citation rate of international papers is not solely explained by the higher performance of researchers. Therefore, international research collaboration seems to exert some kind of "bonus" effect because of internationalization. The results also indicate that researchers who collaborate internationally accumulate science and technology human capital through collaboration. A positive relationship between the international mobility of researchers and their performance is also shown although the direction of the cause and effect is not yet clear.