The full results of the?THE?World University Rankings 2021 by subject

Continental Europe has often been seen as having a natural advantage when it comes to international collaboration in research due to its geographical, cultural and political links.

However, the latest data from?Times Higher Education¡¯s subject rankings suggest universities on the Continent may be lagging on international cooperation in a key area: computer science.

For instance, among the world¡¯s major developed research nations, some of the highest average scores for international research collaboration are seen in Switzerland, the Netherlands and Sweden. But on cross-border cooperation in computer science, the Netherlands and Sweden are overtaken by the UK and Australia, while Germany ¨C a country that also performs solidly on overall international research co-authorship ¨C drops about 20 points.

Holger Hoos, professor of machine learning at?Leiden University?in the Netherlands and co-founder of a campaign to boost pan-European collaboration on artificial intelligence, said the figures could reflect historical ways of working in computer science over the past 30 years.

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¡°In a nutshell, I¡¯d say substantial progress was achievable [in the past] within small, relatively weakly connected groups,¡± he said, which meant computer science research in Europe, with its different working cultures and languages, was often more localised.

However, he added, ¡°the potential for localised progress is decreasing ¨C in AI, this is happening as we transition to approaches that bring together expertise from different areas of AI ¨C and beyond ¨C and sometimes also require far more resources than used to be the case, in terms of computing power and amounts of data¡±.

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It is one of the key reasons why Professor Hoos has been pushing, through the??for greater integration?of Europe¡¯s AI research community.

He said the co-authorship data did ¡°provide strong evidence that pan-European mechanisms and initiatives are needed to increase collaboration between researchers¡± but the potential for the sector was high if this could be achieved.

¡°The diversity in research culture and expertise found in computer science across Europe that has created some barriers in the past is actually an incredible asset, once it¡¯s properly leveraged.¡±

As well as in computer science, the ranking data also show the other subjects where some countries¡¯ ranked institutions appear to collaborate more or less compared with their overall co-authorship profile.

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For example, German universities score comparatively highly for international collaboration in life sciences, Swedish institutions do well in engineering and in the US there appears to be relatively more cross-border working in the physical sciences.

There are also countries that have a more even profile across all the subject areas for international co-authorship ¨C Switzerland and Canada are two examples of nations that score well in most disciplines.

Meanwhile, the data also suggest that China¡¯s ranked universities do not tend to collaborate internationally as much in some subjects, with life and physical sciences being two stand-out examples.

Simon Marginson, professor of higher education at the University of Oxford, said in physical sciences this could reflect longer-term patterns of Chinese scientists in the area working in small groups and only engaging internationally on a bilateral basis, often with US institutions.

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Medicine and life sciences could also now be following these patterns, he said, after receiving ¡°much less emphasis in China¡± but were now becoming ¡°the fastest growing and fastest improving areas of research¡± in the country.

simon.baker@timeshighereducation.com