Abstract
Scientific research activities cluster in cities or towns. Modern cities can play a crucial role in the national or regional innovation system. Strengthening R&D collaboration between cities can contribute to perfectly integrating various regional innovation systems. Using the cross-sectional co-patent data of the Chinese Patent Database as a proxy for R&D collaboration, this paper investigates the spatial patterns of R&D collaborations between 224 Chinese cities and the major factors that affect cross-city R&D collaborations in China. A spatial interaction model was used to examine how spatial, economic, technological and political factors affect cross-city R&D collaborations. The degree of centrality shows that cross-city collaborative R&D activities mainly occur in favored regions, advanced municipalities and coastal regions. The mean collaboration intensity for intra-provincial cross-city collaborations is 4.74; however, for inter-provincial collaborations, it is 0.69. The econometric findings reveal that spatial, economic, technological and political bias factors do yield significant influences on the frequency of cross-city R&D collaboration. Specifically, as evidenced by the model coefficient, it is more likely that R&D collaborations occur among cities that are connected by high-speed railways.
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Acknowledgements
This work was funded by the research projects of the Philosophy and Social Science Foundation of Nanjing Medical University (Project No. 2013NJZS10) and the Scholarship of Jiangsu Province Government Sponsorship for Overseas Study. The authors would thank anonymous reviewers for their valuable comments.
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All authors designed and performed the research. Sheng-qiang Jiang and Xin Li collected the data and participated in the writing of the manuscript. Zhi-hang Peng, Xin Li and An-na Shi contributed to data analysis.
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Jiang, Sq., Shi, An., Peng, Zh. et al. Major factors affecting cross-city R&D collaborations in China: evidence from cross-sectional co-patent data between 224 cities. Scientometrics 111, 1251–1266 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-017-2358-2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-017-2358-2