The Evolving Research Collaborations Landscape In Southeast Asia: A 2025 Update – OpEd
Over the last decade, Southeast Asian (SEA) universities have appeared more frequently in global rankings, thanks in part to increasing research output and impact. A significant driver has been international collaboration initiatives. Singapore’s universities, by virtue of their global outlook, have long had high international collaboration rates (often well above 70% of their papers). Vietnam and the Philippines have also sought more international engagement to boost research quality.
As a result, the region has seen a convergence in research intensity and impact: for example, international collaboration rates in most ASEAN countries now exceed global averages (with the exception of earlier laggards which are catching up). About seven out of ten publications from many Southeast Asian and Oceanian countries involved international co-authors, illustrating how integral global collaboration has become.
It will be interesting to see how those collaborations translate to citation success and whether the pattern holds uniformly across institutions.
Globalization of science has led to a rising share of publications co-authored internationally, a trend observed worldwide and now strongly evident in the ASEAN region. SEA universities today operate in a landscape where forging partnerships—whether with local institutions, international peers, or industry collaborators—can significantly shape research outcomes.
Globally, scientific collaborations have expanded dramatically in recent decades, driven by factors such as easier communication, mobility of researchers, and policy incentives. Prior research has consistently shown that papers co-authored across institutions and countries tend to receive more citations on average than those authored within a single institution or country. This effect has been attributed to factors like complementary expertise, broader dissemination networks, and increased novelty arising from international teamwork.
At the same time, not all collaborations are equal: distance and partner characteristics can moderate the benefits. Some studies suggest that partnerships spanning large geographic distances (often bridging developed and developing research systems) can offer unique advantages by connecting researchers to diverse resources and citation networks, whereas purely regional collaborations might not always reach the same citation heights. Additionally, collaborations with industry or other sectors might influence the nature of research output in ways that affect academic impact – potentially focusing more on applied outcomes with modest citation counts.
These complexities are particularly relevant for Southeast Asia, a region that includes both highly internationalized systems (e.g. Singapore) and larger systems that historically had more domestic focus (e.g. Indonesia). The balance between local collaboration (within the country or region) and global collaboration is an important strategic consideration for universities aiming to improve their research standing.
However, disparities remain. The top one or two universities in each ASEAN country often account for the bulk of international collaborations and tend to have much higher citation indicators than the rest. This raises the question addressed in our third research question: do top-tier SEA universities simply collaborate more, or do they collaborate differently (in terms of partner selection and distance) compared to mid-tier universities?
The literature suggests that top-tier institutions not only collaborate a lot, but they also network with the world’s best—forming what some authors describe as a global “core group” of science. Mid-tier universities might be more nationally or regionally embedded, collaborating frequently but within a narrower sphere. This can impact their citation performance, as discussed. By applying cluster analysis on collaboration metrics, we aim to empirically identify such patterns in our dataset. Understanding these differences could inform how emerging universities strategize their collaborations: for example, whether to prioritize a few high-value international partnerships versus broad local collaboration to improve impact.
Not all international collaboration is equally beneficial in terms of citations – distance (or relatedly, the prestige of partners often correlated with distance) matters. Long-distance collaborations, which often mean collaborations with Western countries for ASEAN scientists, showed a stronger association with high impact than collaborations within the Asia-Pacific region. This is consistent with the idea that collaborating with more scientifically advanced or diverse systems can enhance a paper’s quality and reach. Many regional collaborations (for example, between neighboring developing countries) are extremely valuable for addressing shared regional challenges and building regional capacity, but they might not connect researchers to the highest-impact journals or the most cutting-edge techniques that global collaborations might.
My analysis in Southeast Asia indicates that while regional collaborations certainly occur (and likely have other benefits such as relevance to local issues), they did not raise citation impact as much as the intercontinental ones. This may be one reason why, for instance, a country like Singapore which collaborates extensively with Europe and North America has a higher citation impact than a country like Indonesia which until recently collaborated mostly within Asia. It’s not a value judgment on the research itself, but rather an observation of how citation networks work: the major citation flows in science still tend to emanate from North America, Western Europe, and East Asia’s top institutions. To tap into those flows, ASEAN researchers often collaborate with those global “citation hubs”.
However, we should also consider that over time, as Southeast Asian science grows, regional collaborations may become more beneficial than they are today. If ASEAN as a region strengthens its scientific output and quality, then collaborating within ASEAN could yield high-impact outcomes without needing partners on the other side of the world. There are early signs of this: some intra-ASEAN collaborations (e.g., Singapore–Malaysia or Thailand–Vietnam projects) have produced influential work, particularly when at least one partner is relatively strong. Additionally, regional collaboration can address topics of local importance (like tropical diseases, biodiversity, etc.) that might not get as high global citations but are incredibly valuable. So while long-distance collaboration currently correlates with citation metrics, regional collaboration shouldn’t be undervalued for its societal impact.
From a strategic standpoint for ASEAN universities, the takeaway is that global engagement should complement, not replace, regional and local collaborations. The ideal scenario is a well-rounded collaboration portfolio: partnerships at home (to strengthen local networks and education), in the region (to tackle regional challenges and build regional leadership), and globally (to push the frontier of science and gain worldwide recognition). The top-tier ASEAN universities seem to be achieving this balance – they collaborate widely at home and abroad. Mid-tier ones might still be heavy on local and need to beef up the global portion.
I also found a pronounced stratification where a handful of top-tier universities in SEA have both much higher international collaboration rates and much better citation performance. This stratification is reminiscent of the “core-periphery” model in global science, where a core of highly networked institutions enjoy disproportionate influence. In Southeast Asia, universities like NUS, NTU, UM (and perhaps a few others like Chulalongkorn or Mahidol to a lesser extent) act as regional cores. They collaborate with each other and with big global players, and thus they appear in the network as hubs. Mid-tier universities often collaborate with these hubs (which is good) but also a lot among themselves, which doesn’t increase their centrality in the global network as much.
My analysis shows a core-periphery division within the region’s universities. Over time, one would hope this gap narrows – that more ASEAN universities climb into the “core” cluster by expanding their international reach and improving research quality. Such a shift could be facilitated by regional initiatives (e.g., ASEAN research mobility schemes) and by mentorship or partnership with top-tier institutions. Indeed, some mid-tier universities improve their standing by allying with top-tier ones; for example, a collaborative project between a mid-tier and a top-tier university can boost the former’s visibility and lead to spin-off international connections.
It’s also interesting that overall collaboration (including domestic) is high even for mid-tiers. This implies that lack of collaboration per se is not the issue for mid-tier institutions – it’s the nature of collaboration. Many mid-tier ASEAN universities are very collaborative domestically; they have large multi-university projects within their country. What they perhaps lack is the pipeline to internationalize those projects. In some cases, language barriers or resource constraints play a role.
Not all researchers may have the network or confidence to reach out to global peers. There may also be policy hurdles (e.g., funding not available for international travel or joint labs). Recognizing this, funding agencies in the region have begun to create programs specifically to encourage international research partnerships (for instance, Malaysia’s grants that require foreign co-investigators, or Thailand’s support for sending scholars abroad). Our findings validate the rationale behind those programs – they likely do help increase the share of international work and, downstream, the impact.
Policymakers in the region should continue to support international collaboration through funding and by facilitating mobility, while also fostering an environment where local and regional collaboration is a foundation upon which global collaboration can grow.
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