A bibliographic review of bi-regional collaborations in science, technology and innovation between Europe, Latin America and the Caribbean

Abstract

Introduction: the present paper sets out to characterize the publication dynamics of collaborative research partnerships between Europe, Latin America and the Caribbean (EULAC) region in the last forty years. Objective: we adopt two approaches when analyzing data based on the following assumptions: 1) collaboration is characterized by a central relationship established between researchers from one LAC and one EU institution, 2) bi-regional collaboration is characterized by a series of scientific publications forged with different scientists and institutions. Our hypothesis is to find out if the bi-regional scientific relations between the EULAC countries through international collaboration have been strengthened in recent years thanks to the institutional and investigative efforts to internationalize their research. Materials and methods: we offer a literature review that involves co-publications from EULAC institutions published from 1991 to 2016 to study bi-regional research collaboration in different areas. We evaluate the temporal evolution of EULAC collaboration, the leadership of the publications, and the type of research domain covered. We have found 43 research papers that comply with our criteria. We have divided these into three main horizontal categories: EULAC collaboration, Ibero-American collaboration, and Specific EULAC countries collaboration. Each category has been divided into vertical categories: All disciplines, and Specific disciplines. Results: from this review, it is possible to have a map of the EULAC bi-regional co-publications divided into key areas of knowledge and the countries with more straight or weak scientific collaboration. Conclusions: we have observed how many studies are focused only on a particular area like Biotechnology or Nanotechnology, with a lack of scientific literature in Social Science and Humanities.