1. Do foreign authors strengthen South
Korea’s national research system?
National and international dynamics in Korea’sTriple Helix of
scientific co-authorship relations
22nd
October, 2010
Ki-Seok Kwon, Han Woo Park, Min-Ho So, and Loet Leydesdorff
The 8th
Triple Helix Conference, 20th to 22nd October 2010 in Madrid, Spain

2. Contents
 Introduction
 Scientific Advancement through International
Collaboration
 Development of Korean Science System and the role of
Overseas Actors
 Data and Methods
 Results and Discussions
 Conclusions

3. Introduction
 The globalisation of science (Altbach, 2009)
 Triple Helix perspective of U-I-G relations (Etzkowitz &
Leydesdorff, 2000)
 Emerging role of overseas researchers in Japanese
national innovation system (Leydesdorff & Sun, 2009)
 Rare research on the role of international cooperation in
the development of science system experienced rapid
catch-up (e.g. Korea and Taiwan), particularly, empirical
investigation on international co-authorship
 Research question: do foreign authors strengthen South
Korea’s national research system?

4. Scientific Advancement through
international collaboration
 Research collaboration is important for scientific
productivity (Ramsden, 1994, Lee & Bozeman, 2005;
Adams et al., 2005).
 In particular, many studies shows that international
collaboration is a good predictor for academic excellence
(Bordons et al., 1996; Van Raan, 1998; Smeby & Try,
2005; Abramo et al., 2009; Shin & Cummings; 2010).
 The development of national science system may be
related to international research collaboration
(particularly, in a country with a rapid catch-up
experience such as Korea) (e.g. Albuquerque, 2001).

5. Development of Korean Science System and
the Role of Overseas Actors
 At the early catch-up stage, as other developing countries, the
main roles of the Korean academic system were limited to
education. The US institutions have been the main actors
providing highly-qualified researchers until now.
 In terms of research activities, due to various government policy
efforts, the university system expanded in the 1980s, and
academic research was revitalized in the 1990s.
 In particular, after economic crisis in 1997 in Korea accelerated
the internationalisation . Moreover, participation in international
research projects (e.g. HGP) has been started.
 Very Recently, the government has strongly encouraged high-
quality cooperative research at the international level through
WCU (World Class University) and WCI (World Class
Institute) programmes inviting prestigious international scholars.

6. Methods

7. Methods

8. Data
 The data were collected using the Web of Science
provided by the ISI of Thomson-Reuters.
 The dataset consists of 189,460 papers with at least one
Korean address were published in the ISI databases
during 1968–2006.
Figure 1: Number
of publications by
domestic and
foreign actors in
Korea

9. Data
Figure 2: Number of publications by domestic actors with foreign actors in Korea
- As high-quality academic research was encouraged in the late 1990s, the
publications with overseas actors increased steadily
- After a decrease in the mid-1990s, the share of papers co-authored with
overseas actors grew from 21% in 1996 to 26% in 2006

10. Results
Figure 3: Mutual information in trilateral domestic TH relations in Korea
-The longitudinal trend shows the reduction of uncertainty among U, I and G in the
Korean publication system between 1970 and 1990
- Mutual information among the three actors was relatively stable during the early
1990s, but decreased during the last ten years

11. -140
-120
-100
-80
-60
-40
-20
0
20
1960 1970 1980 1990 2000 2010
T(uig)inmbitsofinformation
T(uig)
2-year moving average
dictatorship
democratizationliberalization
globalization
The trend line shows that the TH dynamics of UIG relations have varied
considerably; this variation generally accords with changes in Korean government
research policies (For details, see Park and Leydesdorff, 2009)

12. Results
Figure 4: Mutual relations between university, industry, government, and overseas actors
in the domain of articles with Korean addresses
-The trend line shows that mutual information in bilateral relations between
university and foreign sectors has been in rapidly increasing since 1990
- Government-foreign research collaboration (Tgf) is the second strongest, followed
by industry-foreign relations (Tif) in the last decade

13. Results
Figure 5: The mutual information in three and four dimensions among Korean articles
- The TH dynamics of UIGF relations varied considerably until the mid-1980s
- Tuigf began to increase in 1987, but remained increasingly stable during the 1990s
- However, there was some reduction of uncertainty among 4 actors during the mid-1990s
- Overall, the system has been stable since 2001

14. Conclusions
 The significance of international authors in the national
TH system is growing due to changes in the knowledge
environment. The interdependencies of complex
technological changes and advances in scientific disciplines
are rapidly increasing, and a competitive advantage can be
secured through cooperative partnerships.
 The findings of this research show that the effectiveness
of national research capability can be boosted beyond the
three national helices by including international relations
into the perspective, and new developments can be
driven at the network level.

15. Conclusions
 The Korean government has sought to strengthen the
national research system in order to narrow the wide
gap separating it from Western countries after the mid-
90s. This encouraged academics to publish
internationally.
 However, the government has comparatively neglected
public interventions in fostering knowledge-based
innovation capacities at the international level.
 Very recently, a few policy measures in this line can be
found in governmental programmes (e.g. WCU and
WCI). However, more systematic efforts (e.g.
encouragement of international research collaboration
attracting foreign authors) are required in order to
strengthen the national science system with regard to
international system.