Academic Freedom and International Research Collaboration: A Longitudinal Analysis of Global Network Evolution

The topic of academic freedom has come to the fore as nations around the world experience a wave of democratic backsliding. Institutions of higher education are often targets of autocrats who seek to suppress intellectual sources of social and political resistance. At the same time, international collaboration in scientific research has reached an all-time high, and the network of global science grows larger and denser every year. This research analyzes the effects of academic freedom on international research collaboration (IRC) among a sample of 166 countries. Global international collaboration data are drawn from articles in Web of Science across a 33-year time frame (1993-2022) and used to construct three separate IRC networks in science and technology (S&T), social sciences (SocSci), and arts and humanities (A&H). The Academic Freedom Index, covering the same time frame, is drawn from the Varieties of Democracy Project. Stochastic actor-oriented models (SAOM) are used to analyze the networks, implemented using the R package RSiena. Since IRC networks are naturally weighted by frequency of international co-authorship instances for each year, the R package backbone is used to binarize and trim the ties. Numerous endogenous network control variables are included in the model, as are exogenous country level factors, including geographic distance, number of authors, and GDP. The results show positive significant estimates for direct effects, non-linear direct effects, and homophily effects of academic freedom on tie creation and maintenance over time. These estimates increase in strength moving from the S&T network, to the SocSci network, and is strongest in the A&H network. This research provides support for the theory that academic research flourishes within environments of intellectual openness and freedom.