New perspectives on the associations between research performance and international academic networks in science & engineering fields

Abstract

International experience is seen as one factor of advancing networks for researchers, which would lead to heighten the researchers’ performance. By searching through researchers’ past academic publications and countries in which they pursued their higher education, the networks could be developed early and become fruitful to identify the performance of researchers. Quality of university is also questioned when it comes to the performance of researchers, which follows the debate of private and public universities’ quality. Therefore, this study is intended to comprehend the association between three salient variables: type of university, availability of international co-authors, and pursuing higher education abroad. This study takes place in Indonesia, where top researchers whose performance is on the top 150 among all researchers and university lecturers are collected and analyzed. We collected top 150 researchers in Indonesia according to Indonesia’s government official research index website and partake in searching their education and academic background. Using descriptive analysis and chi-square for test of independence, this study generates a new perspective about relationship of performance of researchers in Indonesia with their international experience. Thus, certain policy recommendation emphasizes in support for Indonesian researchers to undergo international experience in form of studying abroad or short research programs abroad.