Mapping disciplinary differences of knowledge production and collaboration networks in China

The knowledge economy – defined here as production and services based on knowledge intensive activities – is widely recognized to have accelerated knowledge production and spillovers through a deepening of collaborative networks that can extend over extensive geographical distances. However, limited by data availability, the geography of China’s knowledge production and collaborative networks, segmented by different disciplines, has been little studied in economic geography or innovation studies. This paper draws on data on academic publications that were extracted from the China Academic Journal Network Publishing Database (CAJD) in order to construct knowledge production and collaboration networks for different disciplines in China. The results depict a series of maps that show that: (1) the ‘hard’ sciences (natural sciences and engineering) outperform much more than the ‘soft’ sciences (humanities and social sciences) both in article number and collaboration strength; and (2) large metropolises have overwhelming advantages in the terms of both paper production and the collaboration strength for all disciplines, despite varying among different disciplines. These uneven geographical patterns can be partially attributed to a high concentration of scientific resources in a few large cities, which was inherited from the Maoist period.