internationalisation in science in the prism of bibliometric indicators

Border-free competition and co-operation are in the heart of selforganisation
of science.
The second engine of internationalisation lies in the top-down
processes, which gains full power after WWII. Multinational programmes
associate clubs of countries with reasonably converging political
objectives, either on an occasional or permanent basis. Top-down
processes and self-organisation interact in many ways in large-scale
programs: cost-sharing of large facilities 1 (physics/ astrophysics),
co-ordination of large programs (genome). Supranational entities, first
of all EU, become an important source of coordination and funding of
programs aiming at convergence and integration of member countries,
with a heavy Science-Technology-Innovation folder. Framework
programmes, incentives to networking and mobility, efforts to harmonise
of higher education systems, and currently the European Research Area
initiative are expected to enhance cohesion and competitiveness of
Europe.
A third engine has gained force in the last decades, namely the
general movement of financial and economic globalisation. It has been
celebrated as a strong mechanism of diffusion of knowledge, in
particular through multinational firms. R&D services implementation and
their articulation with local research are often viewed as an important
internationalisation engine. Academic research is enrolled through
tighter linkages with technology and markets. An echo of the increasing
pressures on Mertonian model is found in the "new economics of science"
(Dasgupta & David, 1994, David & Foray, 1995, Stephan, 1996; for a
contrasting view see Callon, 1994).
Bringing drastic cuts in communication costs, the new Information
and Communication Technology (ICT) and Internet revolution has boosted
immaterial exchanges and especially scientific work. The prototype at
European Organisation for Nuclear Research (CERN) which turned into the
world web was already aimed at communication between scientists. More
generally, the ICT revolution and the explosion of electronic networks
have been acclaimed as abolishing distances and announcing "the death
of geography".
2. Adverse mechanisms
These strong pressures towards internationalisation face adverse
mechanisms that can be subsumed within "proximity effects" of various
kinds. They tend to channel preferential relations between actors close
to each in various dimensions: geographic, cultural and linguistic,
institutional, thematic, etc. Moreover, some proximity effects are
anchored in territorial infrastructure or cultural and linguistic
sociability, which confer a strong stability.
The first example is the resilience of the national level. The
nationalist resistance to globalisation of scientific communities,
which peaked in the periods of world wars and also of cold war, is out
of fashion, though enrolment of science in strategic technology, not
1 on the scientific infrastructure see Irvine et al.(1997)