The geographical and institutional proximity of research collaboration

Abstract

Collaboration and the exchange of knowledge are supposedly made easier by geographical proximity because of the tacit character of knowledge. Recently a number of scholars' criticised this view on geographical proximity as being oversimplified and argued that the precise role of geographical proximity for knowledge exchange and collaboration still remains unclear. This paper analyses the role of geographical proximity for collaborative scientific research in science-based technologies between universities, companies and governmental research institutes. We test the hypothesis that the collaboration between different kinds of organisations is more geographically localised than collaboration between organisations that are similar due to institutional proximity. Using data on co-publications, collaborations patterns are analysed and the hypothesis is confirmed. © 2007 the author(s). Journal compilation © 2007 RSAI.