INTERNATIONAL COLLABORATION IN FRESH-WATER ECOLOGY

1. International collaboration in freshwater ecology was examined usin g authorship affiliations of articles published in thirty-three specia lized journals. Most are published in Europe. 2. Researchers from four to thirty-seven different countries were represented in the 100 artic les examined for each journal. Only 29% of articles were single-author ed; multi-country authors' addresses (indicating international collabo ration) were found for 9% (range 0-23% per journal) of articles examin ed. 3. Five of the eighty-nine countries listed in the addresses of th e 3300 articles together contributed >50% of total articles: United St ates (24.9%), Canada (8.6%), Germany (7.6%), Commonwealth of Independe nt States (7.0%) and Poland (5.9%). Of the fifteen countries that each produced >2.5% of total articles, the percentage representing interna tional collaboration was highest for France (34.9%) and Canada (24.0%) . The seventy-four countries that each contributed <2.5% of total arti cles generally had higher rates of international collaboration. 4. Res earchers in the United States and Canada collaborate internationally a lmost twice as often in freshwater ecology than in all science. Much o f France's extensive international collaboration is with countries tha t produce few articles in freshwater ecology, and their international collaboration is often exclusively with France. 5. Three journals publ ishing both marine and freshwater ecology articles contain more articl es on the former topic, but more countries are represented in the publ ication of freshwater than marine research. 6. The percentage of artic les that represent international collaboration is higher in freshwater ecology than in medicine, biology, chemistry and engineering, and app roximates that in physics.