Collaboration dynamics of Mexican research in Chemistry and its relationship with communication patterns

This paper looks at the patterns of collaborative scientific output during the first 10 years of the New Millennium (2000–2009) based on Web of Science data for those Mexican institutions and departments known to be researching in Chemistry. Of the 17,109 papers retrieved 76.9 % were in collaboration, with 34.3 % of these involving foreign institutions. We analysed the collaboration links with foreign partners using visualizations and their dynamics by determining the combination and frequency of individual occurrences and by establishing the sequence found in our country co-authorship chains. Bilateral partnerships were the most common predominantly with the USA and to the lesser extent with Spain. These two countries are also the protagonists of the most frequent trilateral co-authorships. Collaboration with other Latin American countries is infrequent and mainly bilateral. The number of partner countries increased from 75 to 92 from the first to the second quinquennium. With respect to the countries emerging in the second period we find a greater occurrence and repetition of bilateral partnerships and a notable presence of Mexico’s main industrialised partners in the corresponding chains. Similar numbers of journals were found for national and international collaborative papers with important differences but several coincidences. The subject range of journals was diverse in both cases, reflecting the interdisciplinary nature of the field but with an important presence of titles specializing in subfields of Chemistry. Our findings provide new insight into the way countries interact and communicate when co-authoring with developing countries.