The academic world is developing rapidly with many new countries becoming significant contributors to research. In a recent study by Hans Pohl for Scientometrics (to be published), on international research collaboration, a new method to compare countries growth and their collaboration networks in research has been presented. This recent study covers all countries with a focus on Indonesia and Sweden. It highlights that Indonesia is the country with the highest growth among all 48 countries with more than 10,000 Scopus publications (the largest abstract and citation database of peer-reviewed literature) in 2018.

The research growth index, including both the publication volume and the citation impact dimensions, highlights the rapid changes in Indonesia with respect to research. In 1996, Indonesia had 569 publications in Scopus whereas Sweden had 16,904. In 2018, Indonesia had 33,063 publications, approaching Sweden with 43,942. This difference in the growth rate is often missed, as academics tend to compare with peers. The study also shows that Indonesia, Iran and Malaysia show very strong growth in volume, whereas Egypt, Hungary, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan exhibit very strong growth in citation impact. When normalizing and combining the growth indicators into one overall growth index, the seven countries with the highest research growth are, in descending order, Indonesia, Iran, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Malaysia, Egypt and China based on data until and including 2018.

Using Sweden and Indonesia as examples, the study shows differences in the collaboration networks. Whereas Sweden’s collaboration very much relies on other mature research countries with low research growth, Indonesia’s collaboration includes other countries with rapid research growth. Several countries in the south-eastern part of the world are collaborating intensively with Indonesia, among them Malaysia. One exception in this regard is China.

International research collaboration typically brings benefits visible in so-called citation impact metrics (which track and measure citations to scholarly works to provide an indication of the impact of a publication) to both established research countries and also to participating new research nations. Several international ranking schemes reward internationalization aspects and there is thus a double incentive for higher education institutions (HEIs) to invest in international collaboration: it often improves performance indicators such as citation impact and it directly supports HEIs in their ambitions to climb the rankings.

The study indicates that collaboration networks do not appear to develop at the same rate, as the academic world is changing. Countries with mature academic systems tend to exhibit low growth whereas newcomers grow much more rapidly, sometimes at the expense of the citation impact. Even without support for a collaboration network involving all countries at the same level, the soundness of relying heavily on collaboration with academically mature countries or countries developing rapidly should be questioned. To use an analogy from the stock market, a balanced portfolio needs to combine shares with low risks and low returns with others that carry higher risk but also have much higher return potential. There is the need to rebalance the portfolio to maintain the risk profile.

In terms of policy, the study and the proposed methodology support better-informed strategy decisions as regards the prior itization of countries for research collaboration. It argues for a need for strategies and policy support at different levels, if a more balanced mix of research collaboration is to be obtained. To manage rapid changes, it might be necessary to shift from a mainly reactive development of the collaboration to a more proactive one.

Thus a strategy is vital in ensuring that long-term investment in the internationalization of research pays off. Even though universities typically are decentralized, and most initiatives develop in a bottom-up fashion, the leadership at institutional and national levels must maintain goals and a strategy for attaining them, not least to ensure bottom-up internationalization initiatives are encouraged and successful.

One important aspect of national and institutional strategy making is the prioritization of countries or regions for intensified research collaboration. A starting point for the selection of priority countries is the current collaboration portfolio. Which HEIs are the major collaborators? Which countries dominate? What are the experiences and results from collaboration?

The central issue of the direction in which collaboration should be developed must be discussed in the light of the answers to these questions and other strategic priorities.

The meaningfulness of developing internationalization strategies for research is commonly questioned and there are fundamental questions about whether a more structured approach to internationalisation in research (shaped by government policy and driven increasingly by institutional strategy) will produce different outcomes. If research is indeed a principally bottom-up activity driven by individual faculty then this may not be the case. The study by Pohl referred here provides arguments for the need of strategic involvement in the internationalization of research. If a country or HEI has an ambition to develop a more balanced mix of collaboration reflecting the differences in academic maturity, it is probably not possible to rely only on bottom-up generated collaboration. Moreover, if there is an interest in developing more collaboration with other countries than the traditional partners, this might require support from the leadership.

Indonesia’s investment in international research collaboration is paying off, which is a promising development for making Indonesia a prosperous country. Yet according to several international reports, the country still faces big challenges regarding quality and relevance of its higher education sector and the existing skills gap, which are seriously limiting the country’s full potential. It is now high time to address these serious challenges in the best interest of Indonesia.

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Hans Pohl is a program director at STINT, The Swedish Foundation for International Cooperation in Research and Higher Education, in Stockholm. Said Irandoust, former vice chancellor of University of Borås in Sweden and former president of the Asian Institute of Technology, in Thailand, is a senior adviser for higher education institutions in Jakarta.

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