The geography of collaborative knowledge production: entropy techniques and results for the European Union

correlation between degree of integration of a country and its share in the research output is
not perfect. For example, the share of Sweden is much higher than that of Belgium while the
latter country is better integrated in the European system. Similarly, the share of Greece is
much higher than the share of Portugal, but the latter is better integrated. The results can thus
be used to benchmark individual countries in terms of their level of integration and what
would be expected when their size is taken into account. In this respect, Belgium and Portugal
score relatively well compared to countries of similar size.

FIGURE 5 AROUND HERE

The positive relationship between country size and degree of integration suggests that larger
countries benefit from scale effects that trigger European collaboration. Though
comprehensive theories on scale advantages on a national scale are lacking, one can expect
that the degree of diversification in scientific research in a country is strongly related to its
size. Specialised research institutes require a critical mass regarding investments in training
programmes and research infrastructures. If one accepts that more specialised knowledge is
available in the larger and supposedly more diversified countries, it will be generally more
attractive for researchers from any other country to collaborate with researchers from larger
countries.

A special kind of positive network externality present in larger countries concerns the number
of people that are able to communicate in the national language. Clearly, people from smaller
countries typically invest in learning languages that are widely spoken throughout the
(academic) world. In this sense, language can be considered a network standard, the adoption
of which is characterised by network externalities (Arthur, 1989). A related notion is language
as a ‘hypercollective’ good: the more people that are able to communicate in a language, the
higher the benefit for each single able to communicate in this language (De Swaan, 2001).
Following this reasoning, the largest European countries (UK, Germany, France) will enjoy
the largest network externalities in that their languages are more widely spoken within the
European Union, in particular English that has become the global language in academia.¹⁴

¹⁴ Note that in the Science Citation Index from which the empirical data have been extracted, includes
journals in other European languages, too, though a bias exists towards the inclusion of journals in
English.

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