Science and Research Collaboration between Australia and China 2011 Contents
Bilateral Science and Research Collaboration
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- 4.1.1 Collaboration between individuals
- 4.1.2 Collaboration between agencies and institutions
- 4.1.3 Collaboration between universities
- 4.1.4 Cooperation between governments
- 4.2 Qualitative characteristics of collaboration
- 4.2.1 Australia and China are already important collaboration partners
- 4.2.2 Long term relationships
- 4.2.3 Effect of student exchanges
- 4.2.4 Commercialisation links still limited
- 4.3 Quantitative analysis
- 4.3.1 Important note on the data
- 4.3.2 Growth in joint publications
- 4.3.3 Joint publications by subject area
- Joint publications by subject area – CIE extended analysis
- 4.3.4 Citation impact of joint publications
- 4.3.5 Institutional distribution of joint publications
- 4.3.6 Top ten Australian institutions collaborating with China
- 4.3.7 Differing focus of research areas
- 4.3.8 Citation impact compared to the world average
- The Future: Challenges and Opportunities
- 5.1 Governments and collaboration with China
- 5.2 Research institutions and collaboration with China
- 5.3 Businesses and collaboration with China
- Mapping of subject areas between Web of Science and ANZSRC
- Mapping of subject areas between Web of Science and Scopus
4 Bilateral Science and Research Collaboration4.1 Historical development
4.1.1 Collaboration between individualsCollaboration began on an individual, sporadic basis. Professor Wilbur “Chris” Christiansen, a radio astronomer at the University of Sydney, visited China in 1963 as a guest of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS). After the success of that visit, a number of delegations were organised: the Australian Academy of Science sent a delegation to China, a reciprocal delegation was received in Australia, and a group of Australian scientists attended the 1964 Peking Symposium. This period also saw the beginning of temporary researcher exchanges. Two Chinese astronomers visited Australia for six months, and Professor Christiansen spent a sabbatical year in China in 1966, assisting with the construction of a radio telescope based on his previous work.67 4.1.2 Collaboration between agencies and institutionsFrom 1975, important partnerships began developing between CSIRO in Australia and Chinese research organisations.68 In that year, researchers from CAS visited CSIRO in Australia. In 1979, this relationship was strengthened by reciprocal visits between CAS and CSIRO executives. Professor Qian Sanqiang, a Vice President of CAS, visited Australia and met with Dr Paul Wild, the Chairman of CSIRO. Dr Keith Boardman, later the Chairman of CSIRO, visited China and met with Fang Yi, a Vice Premier of China and the President of CAS. These exchanges led to twelve Chinese students training in CSIRO laboratories in Australia, and then the creation in 1980 of four CSIRO projects in China, on agriculture, environment, and forestry related topics. In 1985, CSIRO signed a cooperation agreement with CAS. This and subsequent agreements have formed the basis for a significant series of research projects, exchanges and visits, often in the areas of environment (including air, soil and water quality issues) and forestry, in some cases leading to the establishment of a research institute or commercial venture. Examples include: a 1985 agreement with the China National Non-Ferrous Metals Industry Corporation, which led to thirty Chinese managers undertaking training at CSIRO in 1988 the 1992 establishment of the China Eucalypt Research Centre in Guangdong Province, with the assistance of CSIRO a 1994 contract for CSIRO to supply optical technology to the Chinese Mint, and a 2002 collaboration between CSIRO and the Beijing Meteorological Bureau on an air quality forecasting system before the Beijing Olympics. More recently, energy and the environment have been key focal issues. One of the most significant collaborations was a 2007 CSIRO agreement with China Huaneng Group, the largest power generator in China, for setting up a CO2 capture pilot plant at a Huaneng power plant in Gaobeidian, Beijing. In March 2008, CSIRO signed a related clean coal research agreement with the Chinese Thermal Power Research Institute. The then Australian Prime Minster, Kevin Rudd, visited the Chinese site during his visit to China in April 2008. In July 2008 CSIRO announced a successful test of the carbon capture and storage system at Loy Yang Power Station in Victoria using the same technology as the Gaobeidian site, Australia’s first practical demonstration of this technology. In September 2008, Huaneng announced China’s first successful post-combustion capture had been achieved at Gaobeidian. Other agency-based cooperation agreements were also part of the growing number of linkages between Australia and China. These included a 1985 memorandum of understanding on cooperation in atmospheric climate research, agreed between the Australian Bureau of Meteorology and the Chinese State Meteorological Administration.69 4.1.3 Collaboration between universitiesCollaboration between universities in China and Australia is an important avenue for building linkages, although the higher education sector employs a much smaller fraction of total researchers in China than in Australia.70 A particularly active relationship is that between the Group of Eight (Go8) universities in Australia and the corresponding China 9 League (C9). Both groups represent well-funded, research-intensive universities, with the C9 universities being the first beneficiaries of the Chinese government’s Project 985 higher education funding scheme. Engagement between the C9 and Go8 began with a March 2009 memorandum of understanding on cooperation in graduate studies, including exploration of joint degree programs, summer schools, and exchange programs for students and post-doctoral researchers. One such cooperative activity has been a set of joint forums for top graduate students from Go8 and C9 universities, such as the “Clean Energy and Global Change for the Future” meeting in 2011. The memorandum was extended in October 2010 to broadly encourage direct contact between faculty members at all Go8 and C9 institutions, and provide additional financial and administrative detail on the joint degree and exchange programs. In 2011, an executive shadowing program was announced. Set to begin in 2012, it will allow university executives, particularly research policy leaders, to spend two weeks at an institution in the other country observing its management processes and fostering professional relationships.71 Beyond the Go8-C9 relationship, other Australian university networks have links with China. The peak body Universities Australia has an ongoing relationship with the China Education Association for International Exchange (CEAIE). Activities have included hosting the China-Australia Universities Forum, the tenth meeting of which occurred at the 2010 Shanghai World Expo; and managing the China-Australia University Leadership Capacity Building Program, including an executive exchange initiative which commenced in 2011. University interactions also occur through topic-specific networks such as the ATN/ISTA NanoNetwork (discussed in section 3.2.1), or through organisations that extend beyond Australian and Chinese membership, such as the Association of Pacific Rim Universities. Additionally, many individual Australian universities, including several outside the Group of Eight, have made engagement with China a priority. These universities have frequently established specific centres or programs for research on, and with, China. Examples include the ANU China Institute at the Australian National University and the China Studies Centre at the University of Sydney.72 In 2005, the University of Sydney was the first foreign university to hold an overseas graduation ceremony in the Great Hall of the People in Beijing.73 The establishment of Confucius Institutes—centres for instruction in Chinese language and culture, with some financial backing from the Chinese government—has also been a popular method of collaboration. The first in Australia was established at the University of Western Australia in 2005, and there are now ten across the country.74 Several universities outside the Group of Eight are highly active in collaborating with China, with Curtin University, Queensland University of Technology, and the University of Wollongong all in the top 10 Australian universities by publications with China.75
visits and study tours by delegations and researchers, and exchanges of students organisation of meetings, workshops and conferences collaboration on research projects, including exchange of data and other information, and establishment of links between universities, research institutions and government agencies. The transition to national cooperation was strengthened by the visit of an Australian science and technology policy delegation to China in November–December 1983. This delegation was the first to focus on policy activity, rather than specific projects, and marked a transition to situating scientific and technological cooperation in a broader context of diplomatic, industrial, and trade relations. The Australian delegation participated in a bilateral symposium with their Chinese counterparts on science and technology policies, with a focus on comparing institutional structures, funding models, and commercialisation. The cooperative relationship was further strengthened in 1989, when the terms of the 1980 Agreement were clarified and extended by the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding between the Australian and Chinese governments. The establishment of the Special Fund for Scientific and Technological Cooperation in 2000 provided a mechanism for direct government funding of projects of mutual interest. Funding guidelines and project approvals were made the responsibility of the Joint Science and Technology Commission (JSTC), which was to meet every three years or as otherwise agreed. In 2007, rules were agreed for establishing joint research centres, in addition to projects. In its nine funding rounds from 2001 to 2009, the Special Fund supported 129 projects and four joint research centres selected by both governments as conducting leading edge research in priority areas. The fund agreement also emphasised the importance of intellectual property rights, including the release and use of joint intellectual property.76,77 Other initiatives were also funded by both governments in the first decade of the 21st Century. Intensive research-oriented exchanges of outstanding early- and mid-career researchers led amongst other outcomes to the joint research centres supported by the Special Fund, and CSIRO’s ground-breaking cooperation with China on power station emissions capture. High level symposia on priority topics hosted by the Australian Academy of Science, Australian Academy of Technological Sciences and Engineering and the Chinese Academy of Science improved research dissemination and led to new partnerships in vital areas of research. One of the outcomes of the symposia was a bilateral centre in water resources research, which has saved Australian and Chinese agriculture millions of dollars with new systems for better water and fertiliser management. Cooperation arrangements which include research in their ambit have also been signed between the Australian Government and several Chinese Provinces, between the Chinese Government and several Australian States, and between States and Provinces. Areas of collaboration span the spectrum from basic research to development, and include climate science, medical research and green automotive technology. Prime Minister Gillard announced a new Australia-China Science and Research Fund during her April 2011 visit to China. The Australian Government will contribute $9 million over three years to the new Australia-China Science and Research Fund from 2011-12. An MOU on the management of the new fund was signed by the science ministers of Australia and China, Senator the Hon Kim Carr and His Excellency Dr Wan Gang, at the Australia-China Joint Science and Technology Commission meeting on 2 August 2011.
International experience demonstrates that potential gains from collaboration encourage researchers to overcome challenges inherently associated with distance and language/cultural differences. International collaboration is growing, as seen in both Web of Science and Scopus data. This increase reflects:78 scientists themselves seeking to work with the best people, organisations and equipment, wherever they may be, to improve the quality of their research the benefits of scale, which allow research projects no single nation could sustain alone sharing the burden of a complex project by breaking it into manageable tasks, aligned to the strengths and capabilities of individual countries recognition that collaboration increases the citation impact of a scientific publication: all countries appear to benefit, regardless of their stage of development79 clear evidence that science collaboration builds capacity in all areas of the world flexibility that allows the science base in any country to absorb experience and expertise from outside, helping build the capacity to become both an intelligent customer and a responsible contributor on the global stage, regardless of a nation’s stage of development mutual benefits from collaboration that become particularly strong where nations and individuals are brought together to address global problems which have both global and local consequences, and the broader geopolitical benefits of “science diplomacy”, which allows relationship and confidence building between individuals, institutions, and nations. Recent ICT developments and relatively cheaper travel have made collaboration less costly than in the past, reducing the opportunity costs to collaborating individuals and organisations. However, transaction costs are still an important consideration, including those associated with building and maintaining relationships. 4.2.1 Australia and China are already important collaboration partnersAustralia and China are important partners for each other in science and research collaboration. The evidence is presented in more detail in subsequent sections. Overall, China rates third for Australia (after USA and UK) in terms of joint publications, while Australia rates sixth for China.80 The significance of Australia as a collaboration partner for China is perhaps especially noteworthy, given Australia’s relatively small population. Illustrative outcomes from collaboration over the last 30 years were recently recorded in a publication prepared for the Australia-China Science and Technology Week at the Shanghai World Expo in 2010.81 The wide range of outcomes spanned research fields including medical and biomedical, agriculture and biotechnology, energy and climate change, materials and nanotechnology and ICT.82 It is worth noting that most of these outcomes related to research and development, with relatively few examples of collaborations extending to commercialisation. Research institutions have access to a variety of funds and mechanisms to promote collaboration. Direct and indirect funding to support ‘bottom-up’ (i.e. researcher-initiated) international collaboration include: institutions, including universities and publicly funded research agencies, may use a wide variety of internal funding sources, including block grants, endowments and investment income, to support international collaboration, and government competitive grants (such as ARC and NHMRC programs) can include funding for international collaboration (where this is part of the costs of the ‘excellent’ science funded by the grants).83 There are also ‘top-down’ (strategic) mechanisms for investment in collaboration: exchanges of visits by senior staff (such as Vice Chancellors and CEOs) foster organisational relationships and signal high-level commitments to collaboration, and formal collaboration instruments (eg: MOUs, strategic alliances, joint research centres) provide stable platforms for aligning complementary interests. Commercial science, research and innovation linkages are increasing slowly from a low base: CSIRO’s engagement with Huaneng Energy in China, enabling joint work on development and application of clean coal technology, leading to China’s first demonstration of post-combustion carbon dioxide capture from an operating power station, and its subsequent industrial use, and partnerships between several Australian universities and companies and Suntech Power Holdings Co Ltd, the world’s largest crystalline solar panel company, which was founded by Dr She Zhengrong and utilises technology co-developed with UNSW where he studied for his PhD. The Australian Government, and its State and Territory counterparts, also support collaboration in a variety of ways: political commitment, such as visits by politicians which represent publicly visible symbols of commitment and provide impetus for policy follow-up, and policy interventions (eg: ‘internationalising’ ARC and CRC grant funding) which can affect framework conditions for international collaboration the Australia-China Special Fund and other activities supported by the International Science Linkages program (which terminated in 2011) provided funding to facilitate initial contacts between Australian and Chinese researchers, and seed projects that were subsequently funded from other sources the Australia-China Council managed by DFAT, which has funded collaborative activities in areas such as science communication, perinatal health, botany for pharmaceuticals, agricultural genetics, sustainable architecture, financial services, and health system reform, and programs such as the Australia-China Joint Coordination Group on Clean Coal Technology (managed by DRET) and the Australia-China Environment Development Partnership (managed by AusAID). Peak professional and industry bodies, such as the Learned Academies, have supported collaboration with a broad spectrum of activities ranging from individual exchanges to major symposia. Funding for these activities has come from a wide range of sources, including government and industry. Notwithstanding recent economic reforms in China, the central government remains pivotal to economic activity and the contribution made by science and research. In practice, this means successful collaborations typically depend on government-to-government links as well as the specific science and research links. For example, CSIRO’s successful clean coal technology partnerships with Chinese energy firms are endorsed by the government, through regular dialogue with government officials and review/approval of key contracts. Australian stakeholders regularly emphasise to the Australian Government that maintaining good relationships with Chinese Government agencies is a key factor in the success of relationships. 4.2.2 Long term relationshipsSuccessful collaborations between China and Australia are typically underpinned by long term relationships. This appears to be true at the level of organisations, teams and individuals. CSIRO, for example, has been collaborating with partners in China since 197584, and some university and academy-led collaboration has an even longer history. Such long-term relationships are often reinforced and sustained by linkages at multiple levels, including bilateral and multilateral agreements, regular visits and exchanges by key personnel, occasional fora on large-scale programs and/or specific topics. They also evolve over time. For instance: CSIRO’s collaborations with China were initially established with aid-funding and focused on promoting economic development and transition in China. Over time, these aid-oriented collaborations built many long-term relationships that underpin today’s collaborations, which are now focused on complementary capabilities. The key relationship is with the Chinese Academy of Sciences, but significant relationships have also been built with several ministries, universities and some businesses. the ANU has a range of formal mechanisms underpinning its wide range of specific collaborations, including bilateral arrangements with several Chinese universities, and participation in multi-institute relationships (eg: Go8-China 9 MOU, International Alliance of Research Universities and Association of Pacific Rim Universities). the ATN/ISTA NanoNetwork involves collaboration in nanoscience and nanotechnology between the five Australian ATN universities and 23 Chinese universities making up the International Strategic Technology Alliance (ISTA). Collaborative activities include the appointment of professors from Chinese institutions as adjunct professors at ATN universities, researcher exchanges, seminars at member universities to attract relevant researchers to the network, and a cohort of PhD students based in Australian universities with access to leading Chinese researchers.85 the Cooperative Research Centres (CRC) program supports long-term collaborative partnerships between research institutions and industry partners, focused on addressing major end-user challenges. There are currently 44 CRCs. Individual CRCs also develop relationships with international partners as appropriate to the issues being addressed; in 2010, CRCs collaborated with 545 overseas partners in 58 countries, including 31 organisations in China. For example, the CRC for Contamination Assessment and Remediation of the Environment collaborated with Chinese partners including the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Huazhong University, and the Yindong Bioengineering Facility as part of research into generating clean energy from contaminated sites and developing new methods of reusing waste from metal processing. Given the time and other commitments needed to establish and sustain effective relationships, collaborations with China, like other international collaborations, require serious effort. The transaction costs for building and sustaining the requisite relationships with China are higher than with partners such as USA and Western Europe, although lower than with many other non-Western partners. This reflects difficulties in getting access to relevant information, low visibility of linkage and collaboration opportunities and low transparency for some critical business processes. In discussions between DIISR and researchers, one of the most commonly cited reasons for the measured pace of relationship building was the cultural need for trusted intermediaries to provide mutual introductions, and then build mutual trust over a period of time before the relationship can deepen. The pool of Chinese researchers, from student to senior levels, available to Australian research institutions provides an excellent resource to help overcome some of these impediments, which is why collaboration with China is not as difficult to establish as with similar cultures that have fewer representatives in Australia. 4.2.3 Effect of student exchangesAnecdotal evidence indicates that many successful international collaborations can be traced to undergraduate student exchange. This reflects the common practice of university researchers identifying top students and offering them post-graduate research opportunities, setting in train the potential for long-term collaboration. Being an English speaking, developed country and net immigration destination, Australia has been one of the top 5 destinations for Chinese students. In recent years, Australia has become the second largest destination for Chinese students – about a third of Chinese students studying overseas chose Australia as their host country. China has become the top source of international students in Australia, accounting for about 23% in June 2011, as shown in Table 4.1. Table 4.1: International students in Australia and Chinese students studying overseas (2005-2011)
Source: Australian Government Department of Immigration and Citizenship 2011, Student visa program trends, 2004-05 to 2010-11, pages 18 and 35, available at http://www.immi.gov.au/media/statistics/study/_pdf/student-visa-program-trends-2010-11.pdf; Ministry of Education of People’s Republic of China, various years, China Education Yearbook, available at http://www.moe.edu.cn/publicfiles/business/htmlfiles/moe/moe_364/index.html; China International Education Online, http://ieol.chsi.com.cn/chuguo/zxzx/lxdt/201103/20110311/172435803.html Student exchanges often result in employment and permanent migration, with spillovers for fostering and sustaining international collaboration. In CSIRO, for example, 6% of staff speak a Chinese dialect as their native language.86 Such a characteristic of Australia-China collaboration is not surprising. Migration (temporary and permanent) can be an important dimension of effective collaborations. For example: immigrants, mainly Chinese and Indian, ran 29% of technology businesses in Silicon Valley by the late 1990s. They used their connections to diffuse technology back home and start up IT industries there.87 migration can lower the search costs for new technology and information required to interact with foreign organisations. Similar effects have been found for trade. Rauch (2002) argues that Chinese ethnic networks have helped match buyers and sellers of differentiated products.88 By comparing the effects of Chinese ethnic networks on trade in homogenous and differentiated products he estimates that the presence of a Chinese ethnic network increases trade in differentiated products by almost 60%. His arguments extend naturally to a role for ethnic networks in increasing technology transfer through information sharing. This may have implications for the way organisations foster collaboration over time. 4.2.4 Commercialisation links still limitedWith a few exceptions, Australia-China science and research collaboration is based mainly on research, rather than development and commercialisation. This is probably due mostly to Australia’s overall poor performance in commercialisation compared to its excellence in research, as shown in Section 2. The examples of successful commercialisation collaboration that are reported are often based on personal links between Australian research organisations and their Chinese alumni who return to China and launch commercial businesses. Since this is also how many domestic Chinese commercialisation ventures are established, it is not a surprising phenomenon. A high profile example of a Chinese company which has broadened engagement with Australian researchers is Suntech Power Holdings Co Ltd, which recently entered into collaboration with Swinburne University of Technology on a $130 million Victoria-Suntech Advanced Solar Facility.89 Suntech’s founder is an alumnus of UNSW, and the company also retains strong links with that university. Other ventures that have been less successful also offer valuable insights and lessons. Australian research organisations have encountered a range of hurdles, undermining their progress and success, as they have tried to extend from research to commercial development in their collaborations with China. These have included:
differing cultural norms and practices in relation to intellectual property rights differing commercial cultures, such as different levels of transparency in commercial decision-making and accountability processes, and differing standards for due diligence and other investment processes. 4.3 Quantitative analysis
4.3.1 Important note on the dataThe joint publication data between Australia and China are drawn from the Thomson Reuters Web of Science and InCites databases, as is data on Australia’s full publications output. Due to differences in definitions between and within these two products, all results need to be treated with due caution. Small numbers of publications in some topics make results vulnerable to skewing by a few highly cited papers. Some analyses aggregate the 253 Thomson Reuters subject areas into the 22 Australia-NZ Standard Research Classification (ANZSRC) Field of Research codes90, with an additional code for Multidisciplinary research (mapping schema at Appendix A). Note that field-level data is not de-duplicated by topic: that is, a multi-topic paper91 may count against several fields of research, and/or more than once within a field, so the sum of the counts in each field is far more (over 20,400) than the number of joint publications (11,550) over the decade 2000 to 2009. An extended analysis of Australia-China collaboration by CIE also used the SCImago website92, which draws on Scopus data not directly comparable to the Thomson Reuters data, due to differing journal coverage and definitions. CIE’s mapping of 249 Thomson Reuters subject areas to the 27 Scopus areas is at Appendix B (note that a further 4 Thomson Reuters subject areas do not occur in Australian publications in the period analysed by CIE). 4.3.2 Growth in joint publicationsIn the period 1996 to 2009, joint publications between Australia and China grew 20-fold, rising from 114 to 2,295, as shown in Chart 4.2. This compares to China’s total publications rising 9-fold, from over 14,000 to nearly 132,000, and joint publications between China and the USA rising nearly 12-fold. Of all China’s collaborative partners, only Singapore with 26-fold growth in joint publications (from 52 to 1,352) saw a faster rise than Australia-China collaboration.93 In terms of rankings, China was Australia’s twelfth highest partner by number of joint publications in 1996, rising to eight by 2000 and third by 2008. Over that period, Australia rose from tenth to sixth amongst China’s partners, overtaking France, Italy, Korea and Hong Kong.94 Chart 4.3 shows the share of each nation’s total publications output that were generated through bilateral collaborations. Australia-China joint publications accounted for about 0.6% of total Australian publications and about 0.8% of total Chinese publications in 1996, growing to 5.5% and 1.7% respectively in 2009. Chart 4.4 shows that joint publications between Australia and China also accounted for a rapidly growing (albeit small) share of world publications output. For comparison, in 2008 Australia-China joint publications (1,976 in number) exceeded the total publications output of each of 129 countries or territories, including some with significant economies and/or populations such as Venezuela, Saudi Arabia, Vietnam, Cuba and the Philippines.95 Chart 4.2: Joint publications between Australia and China (1996-2009)
Data source: Web of Science courtesy of Thomson Reuters. Report generated February 2011. Chart 4.3: Joint publications as share of total national output (1996-2009)
Data source: Web of Science courtesy of Thomson Reuters. Report generated February 2011. Chart 4.4: Joint publications as share of total world output (1996-2009)
Data source: Joint publications from Web of Science courtesy of Thomson Reuters, report generated February 2011. World output from InCitesTM, Thomson Reuters (2010), Global Comparisons report generated 24 August 2011. 4.3.3 Joint publications by subject areaTable 4.5 shows the number of Australia-China joint publication subject areas aggregated to the ANZSRC Fields of Research (plus a Multidisciplinary category), the share that the numbers in each field represent of the sum of the topic counts for the joint publications, and the share each represents of the total Australian topic counts in that field of research. Note that the numbers are not the numbers of publications in that field, but the number of different subject areas identified in publications in InCites (topics are assigned to journals not individual papers), aggregated to ANZSRC Field of Research and not de-duplicated. The fields most often identified in Australia-China joint publications in the decade to 2009 were Medical and health sciences, Engineering, Physical sciences, Chemical sciences and Biological sciences, which are in general the most common fields for science and research publications worldwide. However, the fields in which the highest proportions of Australian publications were co-authored with Chinese partners were Mathematical sciences and Technology, two of the smaller fields in general output, followed by Chemical sciences, Physical sciences and Earth sciences. There are low levels of collaboration in the humanities and social sciences (HASS) disciplines (roughly defined as ANZSRC codes 12 to 22) compared to the physical/natural, technological and life sciences (codes 01 to 11, some of 17). Table 4.5: Joint publications by ANZSRC field of research (2000-2009)
Source: InCitesTM, Thomson Reuters (2010), Research Performance Profiles report generated 29 August 2011. Joint publications by subject area – CIE extended analysisCIE analysis used a different schema for aggregating the detailed subject areas of the Thomson Reuters data into high level fields, by mapping them to Scopus classifications (see Appendix B). CIE also performed some more detailed distribution analysis. Note that, as with the aggregation to ANZSRC Fields of Research in Table 4.5, it was not possible to de-duplicate the subject area data so results are indicative only and indicate relative share rather than absolute publications numbers. Table 4.6 shows the shares of Scopus subject areas in joint publications between Australia and China in 2000, 2005, 2010 as well as the whole period between 2000 and 2010. Table 4.6: Joint publications by Scopus subject area (selected years)
Source: CIE calculations based on InCitesTM, Thomson Reuters (2010). Subject areas from Scopus. The joint publications concentrate heavily on several of the 27 Scopus subject areas, with the top 3 subject areas accounting for over one third of total joint publication subject area counts, the top 5 accounting for more than half, and the top 10 accounting for over 80%, as shown in Chart 4.7.96 Chart 4.7: Distribution of joint publications by top subject areas (2000-2009)
Source: CIE calculations based on InCitesTM, Thomson Reuters (2010). Among the more than 200 Thomson Reuters subject areas identified in Australia-China joint publications, the top 10 areas accounted for about a quarter of total joint publications over the period between 2001 and 2010: Materials science, multidisciplinary: 4.5% Electrical and electronic engineering: 3.3% Applied physics: 2.9% Physical chemistry: 2.6% Geosciences, multidisciplinary: 2.2% Environmental sciences: 2.1% Applied mathematics: 2.0% Physics, multidisciplinary: 1.7% Chemistry, multidisciplinary: 1.7%, and Geochemistry and geophysics: 1.6%. The area distribution of joint publications is determined by the area distributions of publications in both countries, with China’s distribution having a slightly higher influence than Australia’s.97 By contrast, the distribution of joint publications is not affected by the relative strengths of Australian and Chinese research.98 4.3.4 Citation impact of joint publicationsWhile citation impact is not a sole or direct measure of research or publications quality, it does measures influence of publications within the academic community, and thus provides the only quantitative proxy measure currently available for quality across the full publications output of Australia and China. Table 4.8 compares the relative impact (in this case, average cites per document relative to the Australian, not world, average) of joint Australia-China publications in subject areas99 selected for the significant number100 of joint publications. Due to the low level of Australia-China HASS collaboration, very few HASS subjects are presented. As this is subject area level data, the numbers are the actual number of publications, unlike the aggregated data in Section 4.3.3. For instance, there were 153 Australia-China publications in Agronomy registered in InCites for the decade 2000 to 2009, with an average impact of 8.46 cites per document, which is 1.07 times the average impact (7.92 cites per document) for all Australian publications in Agronomy in that decade. Relative impacts below 0.9 are shaded in pale red, and those above 2 in pale green. Of the 41 subject areas examined in Table 4.8, more than 60% of them (25 in all) demonstrate a citation impact for joint publications higher than that for all Australian publications in the subject area. Nearly 15% (6 of the 41), half of which are in information science areas, have an impact for joint publications that is double that of Australia’s overall output in those subject areas. In only 22% of subject areas (9 out of the 41) is the impact of joint publications less than 90% of that achieved by all Australian publications in that area, and some of these are areas like Astronomy & Astrophysics where Australia’s citation impact is well above world average.101 Across the full set of 229 Thomson Reuters subject areas that are identified in joint publications, 98 have a relative impact for joint publications of less than 1 (ie: joint publications attract fewer citations on average than the average for all Australian publications in that subject area) while 130 have a relative impact of greater than 1, thus 57% demonstrate a benefit in terms of citation impact.102 Therefore, while citation impact is not the sole driving force behind the growth in joint publications103, in many areas of research a boost in citation impact may be an outcome of significant benefit to the Australian as well as the Chinese partners.104 Table 4.8: Relative impact for joint publications in selected subject areas (2000-2009)
Source: InCitesTM, Thomson Reuters (2010), Research Performance Profiles report generated 29 August 2011. 4.3.5 Institutional distribution of joint publicationsChart 4.9 illustrates the accumulated distribution of joint publications against top collaborating Australian and Chinese institutions. The top 20 Australian institutions (by number of joint publications) account for more than 80% of joint publications between Australia and China. Table 4.10 lists these institutions and the numbers and citation impacts of their joint publications.105 The distribution of collaborating Chinese institutions is relatively more even than that of Australian institutions despite the top Chinese institution, the Chinese Academy of Sciences, accounting for a quarter of total joint publications. The top 20 Chinese institutions account for about 60% of joint publications. Table 4.11 lists these institutions. It is worth noting that Chinese higher education system underwent significant restructuring during late 1990s and early 2000s. Many universities merged and/or changed their names. The counting of joint publications by Chinese institutions reflects their current status. For example, Beijing Medical University was merged into Peking University in 2000. Accordingly, publications by these two institutions in the database are counted under Peking University in the CIE analysis. Also, the Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences includes the Peking Union Medical College. Note that more than one institution in a country may be involved in a single publication, so the total sum of the counts of documents by institution is greater than the total number of joint publications, and the sum of the shares for all institutions is greater than 100%. Note also that citation practices and citation rates are highly variable between different subject areas (and even between specialisations within subject areas), so the “Average cites/document” figures are affected not only by the influence and quality of documents but also the subject areas of collaboration. Chart 4.9: Accumulated share of joint publications by top institutions (2000-2009)
Source: CIE estimates based on InCitesTM, Thomson Reuters (2010), Research Performance Profiles report generated 17 May 2011. Table 4.10: Top 20 Australian institutions publishing with China (2000-2009)
Source: CIE estimates based on InCitesTM, Thomson Reuters (2010), Research Performance Profiles report generated 17 May 2011. Table 4.11: Top 20 Chinese institutions publishing with Australia (2000-2009)
Source: CIE estimates based on InCitesTM, Thomson Reuters (2010), Research Performance Profiles report generated 17 May 2011. 4.3.6 Top ten Australian institutions collaborating with ChinaThe top panel of Chart 4.12 shows the number of joint publications with China by the top ten Australian institutions106 in 2000 and in 2010. The lower panel shows the relative annual growth in joint publications, with the number of publications normalised (the number of joint publications with China in 2000 is set to an index value of 100 for each institution). The chart reveals that the top five Australian institutions tended to have lower growth rates in the number of joint publications with China (the left diagram of the lower panel) than the next five institutions (the right diagram of the lower panel) from about 2007. This suggests that the relative gap (percentage difference) in joint publications among the top ten Australian institutions is decreasing over the last few years. This is confirmed by the coefficient of variation (CV)107 of the number of joint publications with China by the top ten Australian institutions over the period between 2000 and 2010 as shown in Chart 4.13. The CV has been trending down since 2002, indicating the relative difference in joint publication numbers is decreasing. However, the absolute difference (difference in total numbers of publications) is still becoming larger because of the overall increase in the publication numbers. Chart 4.12: Growth in joint publications: top ten Australian institutions (2000-2010)
Source: CIE estimates based on InCitesTM, Thomson Reuters (2010), Research Performance Profiles reports generated May-June 2011. Chart 4.13: CV of joint publications by top ten Australian institutions (2000-2010) Source: CIE estimates based on InCitesTM, Thomson Reuters (2010), Research Performance Profiles reports generated May-June 2011. 4.3.7 Differing focus of research areasTable 4.14 lists the shares of subject areas of joint publications with China by the top ten Australian institutions along with the shares of all Australian publications and those of all Australian joint publications with China. Green shaded cells indicate that a subject area represents at least double the share of collaboration topic identifications for a particular institution than for Australia as a whole, and thus shows a significant focus of research effort by a particular institution in its collaboration with China. It can be seen from the table that all Australian institutions have specific areas of research focus which differ from each other. For example, University of Sydney, University of Melbourne, University of Wollongong, UNSW, and ANU have a strong focus on Physics and astronomy with shares around or over 20%, compared with the share of 9% for all Australian publications and 11.6% for all Australia’s joint publications with China. The first three of these institutions have Physics and astronomy accounting for a share of their joitn publications that is more than double the average share across all institutions. CSIRO and UWA stand out from other institutions with a focus on Agriculture and biological sciences in joint publications with China, and these two plus ANU and Curtin University of Technology stand out in Earth and planetary sciences. Monash and Wollongong have a strong focus on Materials science, and more than a quarter of Curtin’s research collaboration with Chinese partners includes Mathematics as a topic. Also notable is the concentration of some of the smaller fields of collaboration such as Arts and humanities in a few institutions. In contrast to those areas, no institution has a dominant focus in areas like Biochemistry, genetics and molecular biology, but most institutions place a fairly similar level of effort into them. It is interesting to compare the patterns across the six highest areas of collaboration: Engineering (all institutions relatively close to average relative output), Physics and astronomy (wide variety in emphasis), Medicine (some smaller institutions do very little but no institution places much higher than average focus), Computer science (fairly even emphasis), Materials science (wide variety) and Earth and planetary science (wide variety). Table 4.14: Subject area distribution of joint publications with China by top 10 Australian institutions (2000-2009)
Source: CIE estimates based on InCitesTM, Thomson Reuters (2010), Research Performance Profiles reports generated May-June 2011. Subject Areas from SCImago (2007) SJR Journal and Country Rank. Chart 4.15 illustrates the year-to-year changes in ranking of the top ten subject areas for all joint publications with China over the period between 2000 and 2009, according to their appearance in the top five subject areas for each of the top ten Australian institutions over the whole period. They do not necessarily reflect the top five subject areas for a particular institution in any year, and in the cases of Sydney and CSIRO were not the top five areas in the most recent year (2009). Chart 4.15: Ranks of top subject areas: top ten Australian institutions (2000-2009)
(continued on next page) Chart 4.15: Ranks of top subject areas: top ten Australian institutions (2000-2009)
Source: CIE estimates based on InCitesTM, Thomson Reuters (2010), Research Performance Profiles reports generated May-June 2011. It is clear from Chart 4.15 that the focus of joint research with China has been changing over time. For example, Medicine was the number one subject area of joint publications with China for the University of Sydney in 2000 with a share of 23.9%, and declined to number seven with a share of only 4.9% in 2006, before rising to number two in 2009. Materials science rose from number eight in 2000 to third place in 2009. At the University of Queensland, Materials science is the number one subject area of joint publications in recent years as well as over the period between 2000 and 2009. However, it ranked fourth in 2000 and dropped from the top five subject areas between 2001 and 2004. For the University of Melbourne, the current number one subject area, Physics and astronomy, ranked fifth in 2000. The current number two subject area, medicine, was at fifth place in 2001 and tenth in 2002. In University of New South Wales, the rankings of the top five subject areas appear slightly more stable over time. The Australian National University had no joint publications with China in Engineering in 2000, while about 13% of the joint publications were in the area of Engineering in 2009. The subject area ranks the third for the whole period between 2000 and 2009. In CSIRO, although Agricultural and biological sciences has always been in the top three subject areas, Environmental sciences emerge as a new focus in joint publications with China, from no joint publications in 2000 to second, accounting for 13.7% of joint publications, in 2009. Table 4.16 shows the top five subject areas in joint publications with Australia for each of the top ten Chinese institutions from Table 4.11.108 The number in parentheses after the subject area is the number of joint publications with Australia, from that institute, that are in that area. Note the very strong prevalence of physics subjects, followed by geosciences and materials sciences subjects. Compared to the pattern of Chart 4.7 and the following list of subjects areas across all joint publications, physics has an even higher presence in the joint publications of the top ten Chinese institutions than in the overall joint publications output, while engineering and medicine are less prevalent in the top ten. Subjects areas that are not from physics (or physical chemistry), geosciences or materials sciences are highlighted in green in the table. The institutions that have the highest focus outside these three areas in their collaborations with Australia are: Zhejiang University, with its strong focus on agricultural, environmental and biosciences; Tsinghua University with a strong engineering and mathematics focus; and Harbin Institute of Technology with an engineering focus. The China University of Geosciences naturally has its focus on geosciences rather than physics or materials sciences. Table 4.16: Top 5 Subject areas for joint publications by top 10 Chinese institutions (2000-2009)
Source: InCitesTM, Thomson Reuters (2010), Research Performance Profiles reports generated 7 and 11 October 2011. *Zhejiang University also had 17 joint publications with Australia in Environmental Sciences. 4.3.8 Citation impact compared to the world averageChart 4.17 shows the average relative citation impact of joint publications with China by the top ten Australian institutions in 2000, 2005 and 2009. This reveals changes over time in the impact of joint publications with China for the top ten Australian institutions. Seven of the ten top Australian institutions have higher citation impact for joint publications with China in 2009 than in 2000. Monash University seems have the greatest improvement (from 0.9 to 4.5), followed by University of Melbourne (from 1.2 to 2.7), ANU (from 0.6 to 1.4) and University of Wollongong (from 0.7 to 1.5). The three exceptions are CSIRO (from 2.1 to 1.7), University of Western Australia (1.5 to 1.3) and Curtin University of Technology (from 2.9 to 1). This may relate to changes in the proportions of various subject areas, as different subjects have markedly different average citation rates. Table 4.18 reports the relative citation impact, by Scopus subject area, for the period 2000 to 2009, for each of the top ten Australian institutions. For comparison, the relative impact of all Australian publications in each subject area, and of all Australia-China joint publications in each subject area, are also shown. It is clear from the chart and table that in general these top Australian institutions publish higher than world average impact joint publications with China. Furthermore, their joint publications with China have overall average citation impact higher than that of all Australian publications. This is consistent with significant amounts of other evidence, from Australia and overseas, that collaboration between nations with well developed scientific capability tends to raise average citation rates.109 Chart 4.17: Average relative impact of joint publications in top 10 Australian institutions (2000, 2005, 2009)
Source: CIE estimates based on InCitesTM, Thomson Reuters (2010), Research Performance Profiles reports generated May-June 2011. Table 4.18: Relative citation impact of joint publications with China of top 10 Australian institutions by sector (2000-2009)
Source: CIE estimates based on InCitesTM, Thomson Reuters (2010), Research Performance Profiles reports generated May-June 2011. Subject areas from SCImago (2007) SJR Journal and Country Rank. Table 4.19 shows the relative citation impact of joint publications with Australia by the top ten Chinese institutions in their individual top five joint publication subject areas (as identified in Table 4.16) for 2000 to 2009. Table 4.20 shows the top five impact areas (areas with the highest relative citation impact) of joint publications with Australia by the top ten Chinese institutions for the period 2000 to 2009.110 Many subject areas have very few joint publications when disaggregated to institution level, so only subject areas with at least five joint publications are included in the top impact areas. Joint publications with top ten Chinese institutions have high relative impact: most of the institutions achieve higher than world average citation impact in their high volume subject areas, and some smaller subject areas have even higher impacts. Shanghai Jiaotong University maintained a citation impact over five times world average across 20 joint publications in Gastroenterology and Hepatology, a significant and difficult achievement.111 The notably high citation impact of several subject areas in joint publications with CAS, the largest contributor to joint publications in either country, is examined in more detail in Table 4.21. Table 4.19: Relative impact in top five joint subject areas by top ten Chinese institutions (2000-2009)
Source: InCitesTM, Thomson Reuters (2010), Research Performance Profiles reports generated 7 and 11 October 2011. *Zhejiang University also had a relative impact of 1.1 in joint publications with Australia in Environmental sciences. Table 4.20: Top five relative impact areas for joint publications by top ten Chinese institutions (2000-2009)
Source: InCitesTM, Thomson Reuters (2010), Research Performance Profiles reports generated 7 and 11 October 2011. Table 4.21: Highly cited subject areas in CAS publications with Australia (2000-2009)
Source: InCitesTM, Thomson Reuters (2010), Research Performance Profiles report generated 7 October 2011. The Future: Challenges and Opportunities
5.1 Governments and collaboration with ChinaGovernments in Australia recognise that science and research is a consistently positive area of bilateral relations with China. Science and research agreements and joint initiatives are pursued as valued ends in their own right, and in the knowledge that there are often beneficial effects on broader ties between Australia and China. Increasingly, as competition for government attention and resources grows in China and in Australia, these activities can be expected to be directed to the research areas and mechanisms which offer the greatest rewards for both sides. Some Australian government agencies are noticing that many key players in their field, in global terms, are ‘beating a path’ to China’s door and realising that this may have growing implications for their access to Chinese partners. Australia, too, is considered an attractive partner by other countries seeking to engage on science and research matters, and individual Australian agencies can periodically be buffeted by the volume of requests received from different international agencies. This is due, in no small part, to the difference in scale between the Australian and many international science and research systems such as that in China. At the federal level, many agencies have developed formal arrangements with counterpart agencies in China. These linkages are forged and maintained at ministerial, senior official and working levels, often involving high level meetings held alternately in China and Australia. Investment in these arrangements, year after year, enhances the prospects for stable relationships, facilitates more effective responses during periods of peak activity and provides an important avenue for ‘top down’ direction complementing the ‘bottom up’ efforts of individuals. Australian agencies with more intermittent needs for engagement with Chinese counterparts may find value in accessing established dialogue mechanisms managed by other Australian agencies working on issues of relevance to their own areas of responsibility. At a state level, governments also enter into formal agreements with Chinese agencies. State governments play an important role in supporting their local universities in their engagement with China, including through high level visits. Some state governments are developing targeted strategies focusing on specific regions in China or on particular fields of science which are a high priority for China and also an area of strength or interest for local research institutions. The Department of Innovation has used the findings of this study, as well as stakeholder consultations, to inform the design of the new Australia-China Science and Research Fund. The objective of this fund is to support strategic science and research collaboration of mutual benefit to Australia and China.112 The fund will be used to support Australia-China joint research centres in agreed priority areas, group missions between Australia and China to achieve specific purposes related to research and research-driven innovation and knowledge exchange activities. Other agencies planning and managing science and research activities with China may similarly find that this analysis enhances their understanding of the overall picture of bilateral science and research efforts.
Australian research institutions can derive several kinds of potential value from increased collaboration with China, including: expanding capacity with highly trained research personnel at relatively cheaper cost in China accessing major state-of-the-art research facilities, including supercomputers113, being established in leading Chinese research organisations combining complementary research capabilities to tackle complex problems achieving the critical mass required to accelerate research and development processes, and gaining access to greater opportunities for commercialisation of research outcomes. Like any other institutional relationship, research partnerships are founded on identification of potential mutual benefit, usually due to complementary strengths of the partners that are not easily (or more cost-effectively) obtained from working with other partners. This report has identified the strengths of various institutions, and outlined methodologies which institutions may apply to discover similar information about other potential partners. It has also demonstrated some of the benefits, particularly in terms of citation impact, that can be realised in research collaborations with China. Furthermore, it has pointed out areas currently enjoying little attention in joint research, particularly the whole span of the humanities, arts and social sciences, where institutions may be able to take early mover advantages by establishing partnerships with leading Chinese institutions. Once potential research partners are identified, Australian research institutions face the challenge of establishing enduring, valuable linkages in a cost-effective way. Chinese institutions normally expect and require introductions performed by mutually trusted intermediaries before serious relationship building discussions can even begin. Chinese institutions are far less willing than Western counterparts to rely on the reputation of potential partners. Tapping into the networks of Chinese students and researchers in Australia, Australians in China, and other Australian institutions or companies with strong links to China therefore provides a culturally powerful way to establish a new relationship. Strategic choice of partners, both in Australia and China, assists greatly in this networking. For instance, regional Australian universities that team up with Group of Eight universities can gain access to the Go8 partner’s established networks and name recognition in China, including with key Chinese officials. This would overcome one of the major impediments reported by non-Go8 universities in accessing Chinese opportunities. The Chinese Government already encourages its regional universities, mostly in central and western China, to enter partnerships with coastal universities in order to attract international collaboration opportunities with New Zealand universities to the less developed inland regions, in the “Three Brothers” research collaboration program launched in 2005.114 Australian research organisations attempting to establish and maintain relationships in China must carefully consider the government dimension when planning their efforts. The central government remains pivotal to economic activity and the contribution made by science and research in China. Institutions that can foster a favourable reputation with Chinese officials, through international recognition for their excellence in research and through proven delivery of value in partnerships with Chinese organisations, will find it easier to launch new ventures in China. The Australian and Chinese Governments can contribute significantly to relationship building, through grants programs, official events and government networks. Provincial and municipal governments can also be extremely active in promotion of science and research links, through technology parks and incubators, local programs and targeted policies, and through agreements with the Australian Commonwealth and State Governments. Maintaining relationships also requires effort and attention. Once a relationship is established, confidence building measures may be required before extensive research collaboration can begin. This often takes the form of small projects, and Australian institutions should not feel disheartened if initial collaborative efforts seem limited compared to what was originally discussed and envisaged. Taking a long term view and accepting a gradual building of the relationship will lead to stronger, deeper collaborations over time. Even when joint research programs are broad and well-established, Chinese partners will expect appropriate reciprocation of high level visits, researcher and student exchanges and ceremonial events in addition to direct research activities. Research institutions may well find that as their relationship with a particular Chinese partner increases, they also gain access to that partner’s networks. If collaboration leads to an outcome which can be commercialised, this may prove particularly valuable as China offers a much larger, albeit maturing market for commercialisation activities than can be found in Australia. Many Chinese provinces have populations higher than Australia does, with growing wealth and a desire for improvements in living standards that offers large potential markets. 5.3 Businesses and collaboration with ChinaWhile Australia-China science and research collaboration is strong and growing rapidly, commercialisation and innovation relationships are sparser. There are, however, strong incentives to build these links, including the rapid expansion in Chinese patent activity and the escalating international investment in research and development facilities in China. Australia and China share many challenges, such as aging populations, rising aridity and salinity, water security, pandemic diseases and rare resource constraints. However, the scale of these issues in China often dwarfs that in Australia, meaning that demand in China is higher and trialling of potential solutions may be more commercially viable. The immense size and increasing sophistication of China’s markets, which are currently receptive to Australian products, offers another benefit to Australian businesses. China has implemented specific policies to promote commercialisation. These include the creation of a national fund to promote the commercial application of scientific and technological research, allocated A$126 million in 2011115, and measures to promote research and development activities at state-owned enterprises.116 More broadly, industrial R&D organisations are increasingly establishing R&D facilities throughout Asia to take advantage of lower labour costs and larger pools of skilled scientists and engineers. Large proportions of multinational corporations are choosing China and India as preferred locations for innovation investment.117 This offers opportunities for Australian research organisations with excellent reputations, and Australian businesses with niche capabilities, to enter collaborations as producers and consumers of research, at any stage of research and development. Successful collaborative efforts between China and Australia to commercialise research will require ongoing efforts to effectively account for the differing business and management cultures of the two countries. Differing business cultures and government approaches play a role in the current lack of commercialisation, as differences can be more obvious and problematic for commercial ventures than for more basic research. Businesses in both countries can learn valuable lessons from both successful and unsuccessful ventures around different cultural practices in areas such as intellectual property rights, transparency in decision-making and accountability, and standards for due diligence. In its 2009 advice to Australian business on engaging with China, the Australian Business Foundation offered insights that are applicable to collaboration in innovation and commercialisation. While internationally culture influences business relationships, the difference about operating in China is the level, depth, and saturation point to which this occurs. In China, culture affects program and product development, human resources, manufacturing, marketing and sales, intellectual property, quality issues, servicing and speed to market, to name just a few. The cultural dimension is central to the execution of business strategy, and to achieving return on investment in China. Interestingly, these particular cultural characteristics of the Chinese market, together with technological advances such as internet based communication, open opportunities for a new breed of global SMEs or micro-multinationals. Global SMEs have flexibility and capacity to adopt new and effective business models for engaging with China.118 In building commercialisation activities, Australian businesses can also take advantage of their access to the comparatively large number of Chinese researchers in Australian research institutions. Ready access to technically literate, English speaking Chinese students and researchers, who understand the cultures (including research cultures) of both countries, means that Australian businesses are better placed than many competitors to receive crucial advice and generate opportunities for collaboration. Chinese alumni of Australian research institutions who have returned to China to establish businesses also represent a valuable resource. These alumni provide opportunities to begin collaborations focused on commercialisation, possibly in conjunction with Australian research institutions. For example, Suntech Power Holdings Co Ltd, a Chinese solar energy company whose founder is an alumnus of UNSW, has strong linkages with Australian institutions, including a recent A$130 million partnership with Swinburne University of Technology on the Victoria-Suntech Advanced Solar Facility.119 Another avenue for Australian businesses to begin research or development relationships with Chinese partners is through the Cooperative Research Centres (CRC) program, which brings together research institutions and industry participants in major collaborative efforts over several years.120 The long-term approach inherent in the CRC program works well in China, and CRCs are encouraged to collaborate internationally. Of the 44 CRCs currently operating, 16 have links to China, with a total of 31 Chinese partner organisations. Major examples include the CRC for Spatial Information Systems, which worked with the Chinese Academy of Sciences to improve responses to the Sichuan earthquake, Victorian bushfires and Queensland floods; and the CRC for Contamination Assessment and Remediation of the Environment (CRC CARE), which partners with the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Huazhong University, and the Yindong Bioengineering Facility to develop techniques for waste reuse and environmental cleanup. China is not just a market for products and innovations, but also an important source, and this offers other opportunities to Australian businesses. Chinese inventiveness has been well documented since ancient times, and continues to flourish as Chinese people strive to meet new challenges, such as climate change and pollution.121 For Australian businesses seeking partnerships with Chinese organisations, driven by research or commercialisation, making effective use of networks is a key ingredient for success. Access to Chinese students and researchers in Australian research institutions, and alumni of those institutions who now operate businesses in China, can help provide cultural understanding and trusted connections. Businesses can also leverage other networks involving Chinese partners, such as those existing under the CRC program or created by Australian research institutions, to identify and connect with organisations in China in forming commercialisation links. 5.4 ConclusionScience and research is very important to Australia and to China. It underpins the innovation that will lead to the lifestyles and industries of the future. It also features prominently in relations between Australia and China. Science and research collaboration between Australia and China has expanded rapidly over the last decade and will continue to grow as long as current levels of national investment in both countries are maintained or increased and there is commitment - federal and state/provincial, public and private, institutional and individual - to international engagement to improve the quality and quantity of research output. The creation of strong partnerships between research and industry, and between these consortia in Australia and China, remains a greater challenge than research-only collaboration. Innovation can be derived from research outcomes, but the progression is neither inevitable nor effortless. Businesses seeking to engage with China can learn from the way relationships have evolved between Australia and China in the research community. Similarly, research institutions can learn from models used by businesses which prove successful with respect to engagement with Chinese organisations. Establishing innovation-driven partnerships to match the vibrancy of the science relationships is the key to achieving the priorities both countries set for their research and business communities. Appendix AMapping of subject areas between Web of Science and ANZSRC
Appendix BMapping of subject areas between Web of Science and Scopus
Source: Thomson Reuters Web of ScienceTM and Elsevier ScopusTM. 1 OECD 2004, Science and Innovation Policy: Key challenges and opportunities, Meeting of the OECD Committee for Scientific and Technological Policy at Ministerial Level – 29-30 January 2004. The Royal Society 2011, Knowledge, Networks and Nations: Global scientific collaboration in the 21st century, ISBN: 978-0-85403-890-9. 2 www.innovation.gov.au/ACSRF 3 Australia’s population was 54th largest in the world in 2008. The World Factbook, CIA, available online at https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/. Data extracted March 2009. 4 In PPP terms China has been second since 2002, when it overtook Japan. In 2008, Australia’s economy was 18th in the world in PPP terms. World Bank World Development Indicators, April 2011 update. 5 Age Dependency ratio is calculated by (Population under 15 + Population over 64) / (Population 15 to 64) *100 6 The CIE 2006, Impact of an Australia-China trade and investment agreement on Victoria, prepared for the Victorian Department of Innovation, Industry and Regional Development, p 18. 7 World Bank, World Development Indicators, April 2011 update (http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/all). 8 China overtook the USA as Australia’s largest import source in 2008-09. Composition of Trade Australia 2009-10, DFAT, 2010 (http://www.dfat.gov.au/publications/stats-pubs/cot-fy-2009-10.pdf). 9 http://budget.australia.gov.au/2011-12/ 10 http://news.xinhuanet.com/politics/2011-03/16/c_121193916.htm, in Chinese 11 IMF 2010, Article IV consultations, staff report, p 24. 12 IMF 2010, Article IV consultations, staff report, p 23. 13 In 1998 Australia’s research intensity was 67% of the OECD average and China’s just 31%. In 2008 the figures were 95% and 63% respectively, while the OECD average had risen from 2.12% to 2.33% of GDP. OECD Main Science and Technology Indicators 2011-1. 14 Note that the ABS term is used in this report. The OECD, while using the same ‘GERD’ acronym, uses the slightly different term ‘Gross Domestic Expenditure on Research and Development’. 15 Calculated from OECD Main Science and Technology Indicators 2011-1, which reports Basic Research expenditure as a percentage of GDP. 16 Note that these numbers will not always equal the national total due to other small sectors (eg: Private Non-Profit) employing researchers in some nations, including Australia. 17 The journals are selected by Thomson Reuters as comprising the core of significant scientific research publications according to Bradford’s Law. Therefore, publications numbers are not 100% of all scientific publications worldwide, but are representative. http://thomsonreuters.com/products_services/science/free/essays/journal_selection_process/. 18 From the same source as Table 2.6, Australia accounted for 2.8% of world publications in 1998 with 21,427 out of 763,772 publications globally, and China for 2.3% with 17,664 publications. 19 A TPF is a set of patents filed for at the European Patent Office (EPO) and the Japan Patent Office (JPO), and granted by the US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO), to protect the same invention. 20 China rose from 23rd in the world in 1998 to overtake Canada and move into 11th place in 2009. Over the same period Australia declined from 14th to 17th, overtaken by China, Israel and Austria (and in 2008 only, Denmark, hence Australia’s 18th rank in Table 2.6). OECD Main Science and Technology Indicators 2011-1, OECD, Paris, August 2011. 21 Australia was also behind Austria, Belgium, Israel, Finland and Denmark on TPF registrations in 2008 (ibid). 22 http://www.most.gov.cn/eng/policies/regulations/200412/t20041228_18309.htm 23 http://www.gov.cn/jrzg/2006-02/09/content_183787.htm, in Chinese 24 OECD 2010, OECD Science, Technology and Industry Outlook, OECD Publishing. http://dx.doi.org/10.1787/sti_outlook-2010-en. 25 OECD 2008, OECD Reviews of Innovation Policy: China, ISBN 978-02-64-03981-0. 26 China Science and Technology Statistics Data Book 2010, MOST, Beijing, 2010. 27 OECD 2008, OECD Reviews of Innovation Policy: China, ISBN 978-02-64-03981-0. 28 Commonwealth of Australia 2009, Powering Ideas: An Innovation Agenda for the 21st Century, ISBN 978-0-642-72584-4 29 Cutler, T. 2008, Venturous Australia: Building Strength in Innovation, 204pp. ISBN 978-0-646-50110-9. 30 Berman, T. 2009, Innovation governance in Australia, AIRC 2009 Research Seminar Series. 31 In 2008, China and Australia were each in the other’s top eight publication partners, and USA, UK, Japan, Germany, Canada and France were in both top eight lists, with NZ in Australia’s top eight and South Korea in China’s the only difference. In 2009 Singapore displaced South Korea as China’s eighth partner. Data from Web of Science courtesy of Thomson Reuters. 32 OECD 2007, OECD Reviews of Innovation Policy: China Synthesis Report. 33 CAS Website: http://english.cas.cn/CASI/ 34 Data from Web of Science courtesy of Thomson Reuters. 35 Academic Ranking of World Universities 2011, http://www.shanghairanking.com/ARWU2011.html 36 http://www.chinaeducenter.com/en/cedu/ceduproject211.php 37 ABS, Research and Experimental Development, All Sector Summary, Australia 2008-09, Cat. 8112.0. 38 Averages of the 2-digit (broadest) Field of Research results. Source: Australian Research Council 2011, Excellence in Research for Australia 2010 National Report, http://www.arc.gov.au/pdf/ERA_report.pdf 39 Academic Ranking of World Universities 2011, http://www.shanghairanking.com/ARWU2011.html. 40 Ibid. 41 ABS 8104.0 (Research and Experimental Development, Business), released 2010. 42 Ibid. 43 http://english.cntv.cn/program/newsupdate/20110403/100856.shtml 44 http://www.most.gov.cn/eng/programmes1/200610/t20061009_36225.htm 45 http://www.973.gov.cn/English/Index.aspx 46 Commonwealth of Australia 2009, Powering Ideas: An Innovation Agenda for the 21st Century,.ISBN 978-0-642-72584-4. 47 http://www.csiro.au/partnerships/NRF.html. 48 The 2011-12 budget for CSIRO’s National Flagship Programme is $540.8 million. Source: CSIRO, private communication, 19 October 2011. 49 Given as per most OECD statistics in current PPP$. In constant 2000 PPP prices, Australia’s GERD rose from $5.7 billion to $15.4 billion. 50 $10.2 billion to $99.4 billion in 2000 constant PPP$. 51 Total R&D personnel not graphed due to definitional inconsistencies in higher education sector. 52 Not shown on graph due to lack of Australian data for odd numbered years. 53 Commonwealth of Australia 2011, Research Skills for an Innovative Future: A research workforce strategy to cover the decade to 2020 and beyond, ISBN 978 0 642 72563 9. 54 InCitesTM, Thomson Reuters (2010). Global Comparisons report generated 24 August 2011. 55 Ibid. 56 As defined in Archambault É, Lecomte N and Picard-Aitken M. Bibliometric Analysis of Consumer Issues Research in Canada and in Other Leading Countries. Science-Metrix, 2008. Available online at: http://www.science-metrix.com/pdf/SM_IC-OCA_Report_Consumer_Issues_Research_VF_rw.pdf. 57 Data from SCImago Journal and Country Rank (http://www.scimagojr.com/index.php). InCites does not allow DIISR or CIE to conduct subject level examination of Chinese publications, hence the need to consult SCImago, which uses Scopus data. 58 11% of Australia’s publications compared to just 7% of global publications in 2009 in SCImago. 59 Global Research Report: Materials Science and Technology, Thomson Reuters, 2011. Another study in this series, on the United States (2010), notes that while China’s average impact in materials science is below world average, the best Chinese research in this field is “well above world average impact”. 60 10% of China’s publications compared to under 6% of global publications in 2009 in SCImago. 61 Although Australia has attained slightly above world average impact in recent years. 62 At the time that data for the reports were being drawn, insufficient time had elapsed for publications from 2009 to display a truly representative citation pattern. 63 InCites does not allow DIISR or CIE to conduct subject level examination of the full China publications data set. 64 Compare both countries’ rankings in Table 2.5 with those in Table 2.6. 65 A TPF is a set of patents filed for at the European Patent Office (EPO) and the Japan Patent Office (JPO), and granted by the US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO), to protect the same invention. 66 Australian Innovation System Report 2011, DIISR, Canberra, 2011. Available online at: http://www.innovation.gov.au/Innovation/Policy/AustralianInnovationSystemReport/AISR2011/index.html 67 Interview at http://www.science.org.au/scientists/interviews/c/cc.html. 68 CSIRO celebrating 30 years in China, CSIRO, Canberra, 2005. Available online at: http://www.csiro.au/resources/CSIRO-China-Brochure.html. 69 Memorandum of Understanding between the Bureau of Meteorology of Australia and the State Meteorological Administration of the People’s Republic of China on Co-operation in the Field of Meteorological Science and Technology, 26 March 1985. 70 For comparison of researchers employed by sector in Australia and China, see Chart 3.12. 71 http://www.go8.edu.au/university-staff/programs-_and_-fellowships-1/go8-c9-research-leadership-executive-shadowing-program 72 http://chinainstitute.anu.edu.au/, http://sydney.edu.au/research/spotlight/china_studies.shtml 73 http://sydney.edu.au/news/84.html?newsstoryid=2072 74 http://sydney.edu.au/confucius_institute/partners/institutes.shtml 75 Source: Table 4.10. 76 The Special Fund was part of the broader International Science Linkages program. The evaluation of the program is available at: http://www.innovation.gov.au/Science/IPS/Documents/Evaluation_of_the_International_Science_Linkages_Program.pdf 77 Thirty Australia-China science and research projects, mostly supported through the Special Fund, are reported in a booklet produced to commemorate the 30th anniversary of the signing of the science cooperation treaty, available at: http://www.innovation.gov.au/Science/InternationalCollaboration/Documents/AustraliaChinaBook.pdf 78 The Royal Society 2011, Knowledge, Networks and Nations: Global scientific collaboration in the 21st century, ISBN: 978-0-85403-890-9. 79 Note that for Australia’s collaborations with China, the increased citation impact is evident in a wide variety subject areas as shown in Table 4.8. 80 Adams, J., C. King and N. Ma 2009, “China: Research and collaboration in the new geography of science”, Global Research Report, Thomson Reuters. Adams, J. C. King and B. Webster 2010, “Australia and New Zealand”, Global Research Report, Thomson Reuters. 81 DIISR (Australia) and MOST (PRC) 2010, Thirty Stories for Thirty Years. 80pp. 82 Note that these areas fall in the top 10 collaborating areas as reported in Table 4.6. 83 China, (including Hong Kong, in contrast to other data in this report), had the 5th largest share of international collaborations overall in ARC-funded projects with funding allocations in 2011, with total funding for those projects of A$55.3 million. Source: ARC, private communication, 18 October 2011. 84 CSIRO celebrating 30 years in China, CSIRO, Canberra, 2005. Available online at: http://www.csiro.au/resources/CSIRO-China-Brochure.html 85 http://www.atn.edu.au/atnconference/2010/Furlong_NanoNetwork_Update.pdf 86 http://www.csiro.au/news/Mandarin-Podcast-Launch.html 87 Saxenian, A. 2002, “Brain Circulation: How High-Skill Immigration Makes Everyone Better Off”, The Brookings Review, Vol.20 No.1, pp. 28-31. 88 Rauch, J. 2002, “Ethnic Chinese Networks in International Trade”, The Review of Economics and Statistics, Vol. 84, No. 1., pp. 116-130. 89 http://www.swinburne.edu.au/engineering/cmp/news.php?id=18 90 http://www.abs.gov.au/ausstats/abs@.nsf/0/6BB427AB9696C225CA2574180004463E?opendocument 91 Due to the way papers are registered in bibliometrics databases, this is any paper in a multi-topic journal. 92 SJR Journal and Country Rank, data retrieved May 2011 from http://www.scimagojr.com 93 Data from Web of Science courtesy of Thomson Reuters. Report generated February 2011. 94 Ibid. 95 InCitesTM, Thomson Reuters (2010). Global Comparisons report generated 3 June 2011. 96 The ranking of a specific area may change over time. 97 An ordinary linear regression reveals the following relationship: SACi = 0.444 + 0.315SAi + 0.562SCi, where SACi, SAi, SCi are shares of subject area i in the total joint publications, total Australian publications and total Chinese publications, respectively. The t-statistics for the coefficients are 3.90 for Australia and 7.12 for China. The overall fitness of this regression is high, with an R2 of 0.84, and the coefficients of SAi, SCi are both statistically significant. This relationship shows that the subject distribution of joint publications is positively correlated with the subject distribution of publications for each country, although the subject area distribution of China’s publications does have a higher influence on the distribution of the joint publications. 98 The coefficients of the relative impact of Australian and Chinese publications are not statistically significant if they are included in the relationship in Footnote 62. 99 Using the 253 Thomson Reuters subject areas. 100 Significant compared to total joint publication numbers, and compared to numbers of publications in other areas that are aggregated to the same ANZSRC Field of Research. 101 For instance, in Astronomy and Astrophysics, the relative impact of joint publications is 1.04, or 4% above world average, while Australia achieves an overall relative impact of 1.24 in this subject area. InCitesTM, Thomson Reuters (2010), Global Comparisons report generated 16 September 2011. 102 CIE analysis for DIISR, from InCitesTM, Thomson Reuters (2010), Research Performance Profiles reports generated May 2011. 103 Other factors are considered in other sections of this study, in particular the introduction to Section 4.2. 104 Given that Australian publications have a higher average impact than Chinese publications, there is likely to be an even greater citation impact benefit in most cases for the Chinese partners. 105 Note that, due to different base rates of citation in different disciplines, any institutional specialisation towards certain disciplines in their Australia-China collaboration will affect their overall relative impact positively (for instance, medical topics) or negatively (for instance, engineering or HASS topics). Relative impacts in Table 3.6 and Table 3.7 should be treated with due caution. 106 Defined and ordered by the most joint publications over the entire period 2000-2010, not necessarily any particular year within that period. 107 The coefficient of variation is a normalised measure of dispersion of a probability distribution. It is the average dispersion of a sample value to the mean (square root of the sum of squares of the difference between sample value and mean divided by the number of observations) divided by the mean. 108 Using the Thomson Reuters 253 subject areas schema, not de-duplicated by subject area. 109 For a recent example focusing on Australia, see the FEAST Submission to House of Representatives Inquiry into Australia’s international research collaboration, 12 March 2010. Available Online at: http://www.feast.org/index/document/61 110 In both tables, subject areas are according to the Thomson Reuters 253 subject areas schema, not de-duplicated by subject area. 111 More detailed examination of the publications in InCites reveals that 12 of the 20 exceeded the expected citation impact for their type (article, review, etc) in the subject area, and the most highly cited publication did so by a factor of nearly 20. 112 Memorandum of Understanding between the Department of Innovation, Industry, Science and Research of Australia and the Ministry of Science and Technology of the People’s Republic of China on the management of the Australia-China Science and Research Fund, signed at Shanghai on 2 August 2011. 113 China is currently home to the world’s second most powerful supercomputer, Tianhe-1A. 114 http://english.peopledaily.com.cn/90001/90776/90883/7029221.html 115 Xinhua News, 6 July 2011, http://news.xinhuanet.com/english2010/china/2011-07/06/c_13969643.htm 116 Ministry of Science and Technology of the People’s Republic of China, Newsletter for 30 June 2011, http://www.most.gov.cn/eng/newsletters/2011/201106/t20110630_87839.htm 117 Boston Consulting Group report Innovation 2010 A Return to Prominence – and the Emergence of a New World Order Available at http://www.bcg.com/ documents/file42620.pdf. 118 Engaging China: the realities for Australian business, Australian Business Foundation, Sydney, 2009. 119 http://www.swinburne.edu.au/engineering/cmp/news.php?id=18 120 Cooperative Research Centres website, http://www.crc.gov.au 121 For examples of grass-roots innovation towards a low carbon economy, see: Game-Changing China: Lessons from China about Disruptive Low Carbon Innovation, NESTA, London, 2010, available online at: http://www.nesta.org.uk/publications/assets/features/game-changing_china Directory: international international -> 20th November 2013 or 4 international -> International maritime conventions international -> Media Concentration in Australia Franco Papandrea and Rodney Tiffen Introduction international -> Research report prepared for the australian communications and media authority international -> This project has been funded with support from the European Commission (226388-cp-1-2005-1-de-comenius-c21). 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