Journals Proceedings

Abstract

Scientific collaboration is a popular issue in the literature on knowledge production. Although previous studies show that scientific teamwork becomes dominant and is related to the impact of scientific results, empirical results of this research reveal that collaboration itself is not “the almighty” for quality research. This study finds the following three stylized facts. First, Korean universities’ collaborative research with other domestic schools increases dramatically among four authorship structures (international collaboration, betweenschool collaboration, within-school collaboration, and solo a.k.a. no collaboration). Second, we affirmed the advantage of collaborative research but it varies among the type of collaboration. For example, the between-school collaboration is not better option than the within-school collaboration for the elite universities. Third, Korean elite schools consolidate their academic status by using international scientific collaboration. The elite universities increased their collaborative research with foreign partners, while common universities decreased the international collaboration and shifted their focus to domestic teamwork with elite schools. The results suggest that the strategy of top-tier schools is smarter than the decision of common schools. The gap between elite universities and commons has been widened by antithetic preference to international collaboration despite the increase in domestic collaboration among them.