Examining the Characteristics and Influencing Factors of Collaborative Innovation in the Shanghai Cooperation Organization: A Network Perspective

Against the backdrop of intensifying anti-globalisation, scientific and technological cooperation among regional international organisations plays an increasingly significant role. Cooperation among the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) countries has continued deepening—expanding from the security domain to include education, science, technology, and other areas—and has become an important aspect of international scientific and technological cooperation. This study uses the Web of Science core collection of co-publications to construct a collaborative network and explore the scientific collaborative characteristics and influencing factors of SCO. The main findings are as follows. (a) The amount of cooperation from countries notably increased after 2015. Chemistry, physics, engineering, and computing, as important application-oriented subjects, are the main research areas of scientific collaboration. (b) Major differences exist in collaborative linkages of institutions between SCO member states in the network, based on Social Network Analysis. (c) A Quadratic Assignment Procedure regression analysis reveals that academic size differences and social proximity are key factors promoting SCO scientific collaboration. Further, geographical distance, economic proximity, language similarity, and differences in university size were heterogeneous in certain years.