Science is an increasingly global activity. Due to the globalization of the scientific labor market, many countries are implementing policies promoting scientific collaboration and mobility as a means to “internationalize” their scientific system. It has been argued that international and disciplinary collaboration fosters high-quality knowledge production and is necessary to solve complex scientific problems. Collaboration for mutual benefit has also gained increasing acceptance, with “partner” selection becoming a strategic priority to enhance one’s own production. Collaborative partnerships have been shown to be a product of self-organizing networks, in which co-authorships are determined through preferential attachment to high impact and highly visible authors. Collaboration is also influenced by socio-political factors, such as relative size; geographical, historical, linguistic, and thematic proximity; and other socio-economic characteristics.

Intimately related with collaboration is the phenomenon of mobility. Mobility has been advocated as key to increasing the efficiency and effectiveness of research and nations that welcome international researchers and encourage cross-border collaboration tend to produce papers with higher scientific impact. Most analyses focus on the economic and development impact caused by mobility, while a limited few have utilized bibliometric approaches to study scientific mobility at a large-scale and differences between scientific networks created through collaboration and mobility.
We look for studies identifying the convergence or discrepancy of countries in mobility and collaboration patterns, and to determine the relative positions and influence of countries in both processes for improving our understanding of the relationship between scientific mobility and collaboration within the context of scientific and economic capacities.