Global Ambitions and Local Dynamics: Organizational Coauthorship Networks of a Chinese National Flagship University

By adopting a case study design and a network lens, this exploratory research approached the coauthorship network in the institutional context that is internally multi-layered and externally shaped by national and global higher education. The case used is a national flagship university in China, and its network provides important details of the institutional knowledge production and helps critically assess China’s rise in global science. Analyses were built upon faculty profile data obtained through university websites and the publication data scraped from the Web of science and other academic databases during a five-year window between 2014 and 2018.The major findings are centered on the network distributions at local, national, and global levels and the variations in network cohesion and performance by sub-organizations within the university. First, the institution’s global publications and ties have increased over the years, which highlights the trend of international collaboration in global science and reflects China’s internationalization strategies. The collaboration is shaped by the hierarchy of global higher education and science publication systems. Most global ties with the university were built by scholars affiliated with institutions in the global north and most national ties were connected by first-tier Chinese universities. Second, local ties built the basic structure of the organizational network. The inter-organizational network is vulnerable and is connected to only a few large schools, whereas schools in the social sciences and humanities are on the periphery of the inter-organizational network. To build a comprehensive university that matches the standards of a world-class university, the local status of the social sciences and humanities need to be elevated. A collaborative institutional climate and organizational resources would foster more collaboration among humanities and social sciences themselves. Third, in comparing intra-organizational networks within the university, network cohesion differed between natural sciences and engineering cluster and humanities and social sciences clusters. Stronger bonds between faculty within the same school are associated to higher organizational external productivity, extensity, and visibility