Study finds SAARC members have better scientific collaboration with others, India leads pack

New Delhi (IANS):  Despite shared historical and socio-cultural ties, countries within the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC), including India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka, work more closely with countries, outside the region than within, when it comes to science and research.

While the global share of the SAARC’s research publications has increased in the past two decades — with largest contributor India providing 84.41% of the total research output from the region — collaboration within neighbouring countries remains low.

This has been revealed by the study that measured scientific collaboration in SAARC countries.India, which has the largest publication volume, has 77.18% indigenous or domestic research papers, 22.05% inter-collaborated papers, 0.6% mixed-collaborated papers and only 0.17% intra-collaborated papers.

Despite being members of an intergovernmental organisation, only 1,535, out of 933,681 research papers published between 2001 and 2019, involved collaboration within SAARC countries, making up less than 1% (0.16%) of the total.Furthermore, the proportion of domestic research papers declined during this period, decreasing from 81.69%, in 2001, to 63.82%, in 2019, indicating an increase in collaborative research papers.

Roughly, 1 in 4 research papers, published from the region in the last two decades, involved international collaboration between SAARC researchers and countries, outside the region.The report said 250,300 (26.81%) of the 933,681 research papers were inter-collaborative, increasing from 17.98%, in 2001, to 34.92%, in 2019.

Mixed-collaborated papers, involving collaboration between authors of at least two SAARC countries and at least one country from outside the region, saw an increase, from 0.19%, in 2001, to 1.05%, in 2019, highlighting that countries outside the region, such as  Canada, China, the UK, Germany and others, were promoting collaboration, within the SAARC.

Despite intra-collaboration, within SAARC countries being low, the volume of intra-collaborated papers increased, from 24, in 2001, to about 195, in 2019. While India had the highest contribution of intra-collaborated papers, with 1,337, it still made up less than 1% (0.17%) of its total published papers.

The Maldives leads the region in intra-collaboration, with 8.19% of its total published papers being intra-collaborative in nature, followed by Afghanistan with 5.84% and Nepal with 6.62%. This indicates that smaller countries in the region have a higher proportion of intra-collaborative papers.

Many countries in the region, such as India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, among others, share much stronger collaborative relations with countries outside the region than within.

Bhutan has collaboration links, only with three SAARC countries, namely India, Bangladesh, and Nepal.The study also explores subject areas which witnessed the highest research collaboration, within SAARC countries. While subjects, within Social Sciences and Mathematics, saw the highest collaboration overall, SAARC countries collaborated more in the Social and Environmental Sciences.

Countries, such as India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, among others, covered the most diverse range of subjects in their published research papers, from Occupational Health and Medicine to Agronomy and Physics.India had the highest publication diversity, having published in all 252 categories of the Web of Science, a database of bibliographic citations that covers areas across various journals of medical, scientific, and social sciences including humanities.

The study used research publication data from SAARC countries during the period 2001–2019 from the Web of Science. It concluded that SAARC as an intergovernmental organisation needs systematic efforts to promote research collaboration between its member countries, including creating specialised programs for cooperation.