Science diplomacy: A global research field? Findings from a bibliometric analysis of the science diplomacy scholarship of the past twenty years

Science diplomacy is a unique research field that is driven and shaped by scholars and practitioners alike. This study examines whether and how recent trends in the broader science diplomacy discourse have impacted scholarship on the topic. First, it examines whether the pertinent scholarship is as international in outlook as practitioners have made science diplomacy out to be. Second, the study investigates whether recent calls to diversify the science diplomacy scholarship have gained traction. It does so by examining how diverse the science diplomacy scholarship is in terms of: (i) The geographical distribution of authors, (ii) the geographical distribution of funding sources as well as (iii) the geographical area that is being studied in science diplomacy publications. Using a network analysis and a large language model-enhanced bibliometric analysis, the study shows that the internationalization of the field—both in terms of author affiliations and geographical area being studied in publications—is only slowly advancing and is currently restricted to a few regions, with the United States and Europe clearly dominating the production of knowledge on science diplomacy. Overall, the study’s findings thus corroborate past claims that the science diplomacy scholarship exhibits North–South dynamics similar to those in other research fields.