US research lags in north-south collaboration

The United States is a powerful force in high-quality research output, but it may not be pulling its weight in collaborations with certain regions.

19 February 2024

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The United States contributes almost one-fifth towards research in the Nature Index involving collaborations between the global north and south — the highest of any country. But this represents a tiny fraction of the country's overall contribution, or Share, to research articles in the database, highlighting the urgent need for increased engagement with researchers in poorer nations.

Analyses done as part of 2023's Nature Index north-south collaboration supplement reveal how researchers in the leading science nations are overwhelmingly involved in collaborations with global-north countries rather than global-south countries. While this is likely to be the result of historic connections between institutions and established country ties, it shows how important targeted investments and strategies are, if the world is to reach global north–south research parity.

The table below shows the leading 10 countries in north-south collaborative output in the Nature Index. Countries are ranked by total article Share in collaborative articles featuring authors based in both global north and global south countries from 2015 to 2022. North and south countries were defined using the World Bank’s income-group classifications (read the Guide to the Index for more on the methodology).

The United States contributes 19.4% to global north-south collaborative output, but it has one of the lowest proportions of north-south collaboration Share relative to its overall Share in the Nature Index, at 1.7%. Among the leading 50 countries for north-south collaborative output, the United States, Japan and Israel have the equal second-lowest percentage. China, at 0.8%, has the lowest.

China, however, has been making rapid progress in increasing its research collaborations with global-south nations. Between 2015 and 2022, its north-south collaborative Share rose from 45.8 to 157.5, a 244% increase. The United States, by comparison, increased its north-south collaborative Share from 294.7 in 2015 to 318.6 in 2022, an 8% increase. While these numbers reflect the difficulty of increasing Share from a relatively high base, as opposed to a lower one, as well as China’s considerable bump in output generally in the Nature Index, they might also reveal a growing tendency by Chinese researchers to engage researchers from global-south countries compared with US researchers.

Institutional leads

As might be expected, the strongest US institutions for north-south collaborative output in the Nature Index are the strongest in the nation overall, with Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), both in Cambridge, Massachusetts; Stanford University, in Stanford, California; and the US National Institutes of Health, in Bethesda, Maryland, leading the way.

But among the 10 leading US institutions for north-south collaborative output, the University of California, Davis, in Davis, California, does stand out. In the table below, it ranks ninth, but in the 2023 Nature Index Annual Tables, it was the 41st ranked institution for the United States overall.

Building connections, whether it’s between individual teams and institutions, or between governments as part of new shared policies, is crucial for increasing north-south collaborative output. Such efforts take time, especially to build trust among research teams from countries that have been historically exploited through practices such as parachute science.

An analysis of the leading collaborations in the Nature Index between the United States and Least Developed Countries (LDCs) — a United Nations grouping of some of the world’s poorest nations —reveals where strong opportunities could lie by building on existing partnerships.

In 2022, China overtook the United States for the first time to become the leading country for natural-sciences research output in the Nature Index. If the United States wants to regain its edge in the global research ecosystem, forging valuable new partnerships in parts of the world that with reserves of untapped potential could be a strategy worth pursuing.