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ORIGINAL ARTICLE
Towards institutional analysis of sustainability science:
a quantitative examination of the patterns
of research collaboration
Masaru Yarime •Yoshiyuki Takeda •
Yuya Kajikawa
Received: 15 June 2009 / Accepted: 16 September 2009 / Published online: 10 November 2009
ÓIntegrated Research System for Sustainability Science, United Nations University, and Springer 2009
Abstract This paper examines quantitatively the patterns
of collaboration over geographical boundaries in the
emerging field of sustainability science by empirically
analyzing the bibliometric data of scientific articles. The
results indicate that an increasing number of countries are
engaged in research on sustainability, with the proportion
of articles published through international collaboration
rising as well. The number of countries engaged in inter-
national collaboration on sustainability research has been
increasing, and the diversity of countries engaged in
research collaboration beyond national borders is also
increasing. The geographical patterns of collaboration on
sustainability show that research collaboration tends to be
conducted between countries which are geographically
located closely, suggesting that communication and infor-
mation exchange might be limited within the regional
clusters. The focused fields of research activities on sus-
tainability are significantly different between countries, as
each country has its focused fields of research related to
sustainability. The specialization of research activities is
also observed in international collaboration. While these
patterns of international collaboration within regional
clusters focusing on specific fields could be effective in
promoting the creation, transmission, and sharing of
knowledge on sustainability utilizing the already existing
regional networks, they could pose a serious obstacle to
collecting, exchanging, and integrating diverse types of
knowledge, especially when it is necessary to deal with
problems involving large-scale complex interactions with
long-term implications, such as climate change. It would be
of critical importance to establish inter-regional linkages
by devising appropriate institutional arrangements for
global research collaboration on sustainability science.
Keywords Sustainability science Institutional analysis
Research collaboration Bibliometrics
Introduction
The remarkable progress in computational and communi-
cation technologies in recent years has made it possible for
scientific and technical data and information to be pro-
duced and reused at an ever-accelerating rate. This has
started to have a transformational impact on research
activities in science (Emmott 2006). These novel fields of
scientific research increasingly depend on the collection,
transmission, and utilization of a vast amount of informa-
tion and knowledge. Electronic infrastructure established
for this function has come to be referred to as ‘Cyberin-
frastructure’ in the US, ‘e-Science’ in Europe, and
‘e-Infrastructure’ in Japan (David et al. 2003; National
Science Foundation 2003). As the data intensity of research
activities in scientific fields has increased significantly, the
sharing of information and knowledge is expected to
M. Yarime (&)
Graduate Program in Sustainability Science (GPSS),
Graduate School of Frontier Sciences, University of Tokyo,
Kashiwanoha 5-1-5, Kashiwa, Chiba 277-8563, Japan
e-mail: yarime@k.u-tokyo.ac.jp
Y. Takeda
Department of Project Management, Faculty of Social Systems
Science, Chiba Institute of Technology, 2-17-1 Tsudanuma,
Narashino, Chiba 275-0016, Japan
Y. Kajikawa
Institute of Engineering Innovation, School of Engineering,
University of Tokyo, 2-11-16 Yayoi, Bunkyo-ku,
Tokyo 113-8656, Japan
123
Sustain Sci (2010) 5:115–125
DOI 10.1007/s11625-009-0090-4
provide a critical foundation for accelerating scientific and
technological development.
These developments in scientific research has enabled
the rapid creation of information and knowledge and easy
access to their sources, which are essential components of
innovation (Foray 2004). Especially in fields where scien-
tific progress is rapidly developing and the sources of
information and knowledge are widely distributed, no
single individual or organization has all of the necessary
skills to stay on top of all areas of progress (Powell and
Grodal 2005). Previous research confirms the important
role of external sources of scientific information in bring-
ing forth significant breakthroughs (Freeman 1991). Dense
ties between partners in collaboration networks contribute
to fostering information diffusion and knowledge
exchange, enhancing the scientific performance and col-
laborating opportunities of the partners (Uzzi 1997; Stuart
1998; Ahuja 2000; Yarime 2009a,b; Baba et al. 2009).
Recently, we have observed new scientific fields which
transcend traditional boundaries of academic disciplines,
that is, inter-disciplinary or trans-disciplinary science
(Haberli and Klein 2001). Among the emerging fields of
inter-disciplinary science are bio-informatics (Matsuda
et al. 2006), material informatics (Chikyo 2006), com-
plexity science, and sustainability science. Sustainability
science, in particular, aimed at understanding the funda-
mental character of interactions between natural, human,
and social systems, covers a wide range of academic dis-
ciplines (Kates et al. 2001; Clark and Dickson 2003;
Komiyama and Takeuchi 2006). Since the challenge of
sustainability is the reconciliation of society’s development
goals with the planet’s environmental limits over the long
term (Clark and Dickson 2003), it is of critical importance
to make appropriate use of knowledge and information on
diverse aspects, ranging from the natural environment and
artifacts to economy and culture.
Sustainability science, thus, needs to be based on a firm
understanding of the fundamental characters of complex
interactions and interdependencies between natural,
human, and social systems at the global scale. This will
require an integration of various academic disciplines, from
natural sciences and engineering to social sciences and
humanities. A recent study shows empirically that the
academic landscape of sustainability science actually
consists of clusters of different disciplines (Kajikawa et al.
2007). It will be crucial that scientific information and
knowledge are created and communicated effectively as
well as efficiently, transcending disciplinary and geo-
graphical boundaries in the field of sustainability science.
When tackling cross-cutting problems, as particularly
expected in sustainability science, assembling appropriate
expertise could be one of the prime reasons for scientific
collaboration (Shrum et al. 2007).
In reality, however, scientific knowledge and informa-
tion are not necessarily shared or integrated effectively
beyond established organizational or institutional bound-
aries (Maurer 2006). This has particularly serious impli-
cations in the case of sustainability science, which deals
with diverse types of discipline and expertise. There are
technical, economic, policy, and legal/institutional barriers
and obstacles discouraging collaboration in scientific
activities.
This paper is an attempt to examine quantitatively the
patterns of collaboration in the emerging field of sustain-
ability science. The patterns of scientific collaboration are
analyzed by utilizing bibliometric data on scientific articles
published in academic journals in terms of geographical
boundaries and research subjects. Based on empirical
findings on the current state of collaboration, opportunities
as well as challenges in establishing research collaboration
in sustainability science are discussed. Implications will
also be drawn for organizational and institutional
arrangements to be set up for future research.
Data and analytical methodology
It has been an issue of debate for what could be included
in the field of sustainability science. As we have not yet
reached a state of consensus on the definition, concepts,
or methodologies which should be adopted in this
emerging field of sustainability science, in this paper, we
limit our investigation to examining scientific articles
which contain the term ‘sustainability.’ This is basically
the same approach taken in previous research which
attempted to examine quantitatively the academic land-
scape of sustainability science (Kajikawa et al. 2007).
An empirical analysis is conducted on the patterns of
research collaboration by looking at the co-authorship of
articles published in academic journals. An assumption is
made here that knowledge creation and sharing in
research is reflected in the co-authorship patterns of
publications. More practically, a data set of research
articles which include ‘sustainability’ or ‘sustainable’ in
their titles, abstracts, and keywords is created. Data on
these publications are collected from the Science Citation
Index (SCI) and the Social Sciences Citation Index
(SSCI), compiled by the Institute for Scientific Infor-
mation (ISI), two of the sources utilized frequently for
citation data. This choice of databases limits the scope of
our examination to scientific articles published in Eng-
lish. Although that would involve a certain degree of
bias favoring articles written by researchers in English-
speaking countries, currently, these two databases are the
most reliable bibliometric sources, covering a very wide
range of academic journals in diverse fields. As
116 Sustain Sci (2010) 5:115–125
123
academic activities through international collaboration
tend to be conducted in English, with the resulting sci-
entific articles mainly published in English, we assume
that the English bias would be negligible in examining
the patterns of international collaboration. Articles are
picked up by using ‘sustainab*’ as the keyword of the
query, where the * means a wildcard so that the corpus
built includes those papers that contain ‘sustainability’ or
‘sustainable.’
The retrieved data includes the bibliographic record of
author affiliations. The frequencies in which the countries
of the author affiliations appear, as well as that of the co-
occurrence of them, are counted in the records. After
gathering these statistics, the collaboration intensity of two
countries, Int
i,j
, is calculated by the following equation:
Inti;j¼ðkijÞ2
ninj
;
Table 1 List of journals with articles on sustainability
Title of journal (# of articles on sustainability)
Ecological Economics (809)
Forest Ecology and Management (513)
Water Science and Technology (511)
Agriculture Ecosystems and Environment (473)
Journal of Cleaner Production (443)
Energy Policy (397)
Journal of Sustainable Agriculture (387)
International Journal of Sustainable Development and World Ecology
(372)
Forestry Chronicle (362)
Journal of Environmental Management (324)
Environmental Management (299)
Ambio (298)
Landscape and Urban Planning (254)
Sustainable Development (228)
Ocean & Coastal Management (216)
Futures (207)
World Development (204)
Ecological Modelling (201)
Agricultural Systems (200)
Biodiversity and Conservation (198)
Conservation Biology (197)
Environmental Conservation (191)
Agroforestry Systems (187)
Australian Journal of Experimental Agriculture (179)
Society & Natural Resources (179)
Soil & Tillage Research (179)
Ecological Applications (176)
Environmental Science & Technology (173)
Mountain Research and Development (173)
Renewable & Sustainable Energy Reviews (171)
Fisheries Research (170)
Natural Resources Forum (169)
Resources Conservation and Recycling (166)
Desalination (165)
Biological Conservation (164)
Land Use Policy (162)
Journal of Forestry (161)
Renewable Energy (159)
Building Research and Information (155)
Marine Policy (151)
Environmental Monitoring And Assessment (148)
Agricultural Water Management (146)
Biomass & Bioenergy (142)
Tourism Management (141)
Plant and Soil (142)
Current Science (131)
Journal of Business Ethics (130)
Table 1 continued
Title of journal (# of articles on sustainability)
Land Degradation & Development (130)
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United
States of America (129)
Water International (129)
Science (127)
Outlook on Agriculture (123)
Aquaculture (121)
Energy (120)
Environment and Planning A (117)
Geoforum (117)
Forest Policy and Economics (116)
Ecological Engineering (115)
Geography (115)
Physics and Chemistry of the Earth (115)
Geographical Journal (114)
Hydrobiologia (114)
Journal of Applied Ecology (113)
Transportation Research Record (111)
Ecology and Society (110)
Environment (110)
Environment and Urbanization (107)
Journal of Soil and Water Conservation (107)
Science of the Total Environment (105)
Urban Studies (105)
Environmental Values (104)
Global Environmental Change-Human and Policy Dimensions (104)
Environmental Geology (103)
Human Ecology (103)
International Forestry Review (103)
Communications in Soil Science and Plant Analysis (102)
Sustain Sci (2010) 5:115–125 117
123
where n
i
and n
j
are the number of papers of country iand j,
respectively, and k
ij
is the number of co-authored papers by
country iand j. The number of links between the two
countries is normalized by the number of papers written by
each country in order to cancel out the convergence effect
to specific countries which have a large number of papers.
A high value of collaboration intensity suggests that the
two countries tend to have a large degree of collaboration
between them in their research publications.
Also calculated is the collaboration-intensity similarity
of two countries. It is calculated in the following way:
Simi;j¼kij
ki
kij
kj
N2
ninj
;
where k
i
and k
j
are the number of collaborating countries of
country iand j, respectively, and Nis the number of all
papers. A pair with a high value of Sim
i,j
means that the
paired countries tend to focus on collaboration between
them relative to other research partners.
Then, a network is created based on the data of the
collaboration-intensity similarity. We visualized the struc-
tures of collaboration networks by using the Fruchterman–
Reingold (FR) method (Fruchterman and Reingold 1991),
which is based on a spring layout algorithm where links
play the role of spring-connecting nodes. The social net-
work analysis tool Pajek was used for the visualization. As
a result of such layout, a group of countries which write
articles together tend to be located in closer positions. We
regard Sim
i,j
as similarity between the countries. The width
of links between countries in the visualization is drawn to
be proportional to Sim
i,j
.
The inter-disciplinary field of sustainability science
requires, by its nature, diverse types of knowledge,
reflecting the complexity of the issue of sustainability. As
such, it would be difficult for any single country to conduct
research on all of the fields related to sustainability science.
Probably, each country has its own focused areas relative to
the other fields. To see which fields are emphasized in the
research of each country, the degree of concentration on a
specific field is calculated as follows:
cif ¼nif
niNf
N;
where c
if
is the degree of concentration of country ion
subject field f,n
if
is the number of articles of country iin
field f,n
i
is the total number of articles of country i, and N
f
is the number of articles of all countries in field f.
Just as each country would have specialization with
regard to research fields, collaboration between two
countries could also be specialized in certain fields. In a
similar manner, we examine the degree of research con-
centration on a specific field in international collaboration
as follows:
cijf ¼nijf
nij Nf
N
where c
ijf
is the degree of concentration in international
collaboration between country iand country jon subject
field f,n
ijf
is the number of co-authored articles between
country iand country jin field f, and n
ij
is the total number
of coauthored articles between country iand country j.
Results
By using the methodology mentioned in the previous sec-
tion, we collected a total of 41,487 articles on sustain-
ability. The journals in which these articles were published
are listed in Table 1. In this table, only those journals
which published more than 100 articles on sustainability
Fig. 1 Countries with
publications through
international collaboration on
sustainability
118 Sustain Sci (2010) 5:115–125
123
are included. Ecological Economics, Forest Ecology and
Management, Water Science and Technology, and Agri-
culture Ecosystems & Environment are among the journals
which published a large number of articles on
sustainability.
The trends in the number of countries which published
scientific articles on sustainability are shown in Fig. 1.
Countries have been increasingly engaged in publishing
scientific articles on sustainability since the beginning of
the 1990s. Along with that trend, the number of countries
which have been involved in international collaboration in
research on sustainability has also increased steadily.
Approximately 90% of those countries with publications on
sustainability have been engaged in some form of inter-
national collaboration, which suggests that, in most of the
countries, there are researchers who are working on issues
related to sustainability with researchers in different
countries.
A comparison is made between the papers written
through international collaboration and those written
domestically in Fig. 2.
The proportion of publications through two-country
collaboration is increasing, with the ratio of publications
through bilateral collaboration to domestic research
reaching more than one to five. The trend in publications
through collaboration among three countries also shows a
gradual increase compared with papers written without any
international collaboration.
To see the diversity of the countries which have been
engaged in publishing scientific papers on sustainability,
we examined the degree of concentration of the countries
with publications. The result is shown in Fig. 3.
The Hirschman–Herfindahl index (HHI) is adopted to
examine the degree of concentration of the countries
engaged in publishing scientific articles on sustainability. A
large value of HHI means that the publication of scientific
articles on sustainability is concentrated in a relatively
Fig. 2 Bilateral and trilateral international research collaboration on
sustainability
Fig. 3 Degree of concentration
of countries engaged in
publications on sustainability
Fig. 4 Geographical distribution of scientific articles on sustainabil-
ity (2007)
Sustain Sci (2010) 5:115–125 119
123
small number of countries. While the number of scientific
articles on sustainability has been increasing rapidly since
the early 1990s, HHI for the countries which produce these
publications has been declining, which suggests that more
and more countries have been engaged in research activi-
ties on sustainability issues. HHI for the countries which
have publications through international collaboration
shows a trend of more significant decline, indicating that
more diverse countries have recently been involved in
international research collaboration.
The geographical distribution of scientific articles on
sustainability accumulated by 2007 is given in Fig. 4.
Approximately one-fourth of articles related to sustain-
ability were published by researchers who belong to
organizations based in the US, followed by other English-
speaking countries, namely, the UK, Canada, and Austra-
lia. Researchers in European countries, including Germany,
the Netherlands, France, and Sweden, also published many
articles, as well as those in Asian countries, notably, China
and Japan.
The network structures of international research col-
laboration on sustainability in 1995, 2000, and 2007 are
shown in Figs. 5,6, and 7, respectively. Since there are 177
countries which published at least one article related to
Fig. 5 Network structure of
international research
collaboration on sustainability
(1995)
Fig. 6 Network structure of
international research
collaboration on sustainability
(2000)
120 Sustain Sci (2010) 5:115–125
123
sustainability, the network structure of each contains only
the top 30 countries with regard to the number of publi-
cations in the respective year. The width of a link repre-
sents the collaboration-intensity similarity between the two
countries connected by the link.
To see more details on the network structure of inter-
national research collaboration on sustainability in 2007,
Table 2gives the list of country pairs with a large value of
collaboration-intensity similarity.
The list of collaboration pairs with a larger similarity
value include countries which are located in geographical
proximity, notably, Finland, Norway, Sweden, Denmark,
Austria, and Italy in Europe. In other regions, Asian
countries, namely, India, China, Thailand, Taiwan, and
Japan, are also focusing on collaboration with each other.
While the largest number of scientific articles on sustain-
ability has been published by researchers in the US, the top
twenty list of the country pairs with a large similarity value
does not include this country, which suggests that authors
in the US tend to collaborate relatively equally with their
counterparts in other countries.
Reflecting such close relationships among countries, we
can see some groups who have dense ties within the group,
as shown in Fig. 8. As can been seen, the collaboration
network is basically fragmented into three regional blocks,
namely, Europe and Africa, North and South Americas,
and the Asia–Pacific region. This implies that the creation,
transmission, and sharing of information and knowledge on
sustainability might be limited within the regional clusters.
The focused fields of research in sustainability science
are given in Table 3for some of the countries with a large
number of publications on sustainability.
The results show that the fields which have been
emphasized in research activities with regard to sustain-
ability are quite diverse between different countries. The
values of the degree of concentration of focused fields in
the US fall between -1.7 and 2%, and those values range
Fig. 7 Network structure of
international research
collaboration on sustainability
(2007)
Table 2 Country pairs with a large value of collaboration-intensity
similarity (2007)
Country A Country B Collaboration-
intensity similarity
Finland Austria 30.0
Finland Sweden 29.5
Denmark Norway 19.3
Norway Austria 18.3
Sweden Denmark 13.3
Sweden Norway 13.3
Spain Argentina 10.1
Denmark Austria 8.2
Argentina Thailand 7.5
India Thailand 7.2
Finland Denmark 6.6
Italy Austria 6.5
Finland Norway 4.4
Sweden Austria 2.8
Mexico Argentina 2.8
Germany Austria 2.6
Thailand Taiwan 2.4
China Thailand 1.8
Thailand Japan 1.6
Italy Spain 1.4
Sustain Sci (2010) 5:115–125 121
123
from -1.5 to 2.3% in the case of China. This suggests that
the research activities conducted in these countries are
distributed evenly in different fields relative to the global
trends. In other countries like Germany, India, and Japan,
on the other hand, the range of values of the degree of
concentration in subject fields is relatively large, which
implies that research activities in these countries are
focused on specific fields.
In a similar way to the focused fields of each country,
we examined the research fields which have been empha-
sized in international collaborations on sustainability.
Table 4shows examples of the focused areas in research
collaboration between Japan and China.
The field of water resources is the subject which is most
frequently addressed in research collaboration between the
two countries. While this area is also strongly emphasized
in China, it is not the field which is of particular focus in
Japan. This can also be said for other areas of strong focus
of the bilateral collaboration, including plant sciences,
ecology, soil science, and environmental sciences. These
results suggest that the fields of research collaboration
between Japan and China in sustainability science mainly
reflect those areas emphasized in China. It would be
implied that the bilateral collaboration is mainly influenced
by the research agenda which includes urgent needs in
China. While the necessity of environmental protection has
been increasingly recognized and addressed in China,
Japan has a substantial amount of research findings and
expertise in diverse areas of environmental issues, partly
due to the ample experiences of coping with various types
of pollution and accidents accumulated in the past.
Research collaboration between Japan and China, thus,
would tend to be mainly aimed at addressing research
needs in China, with the support of knowledge and
expertise coming from Japanese researchers.
Finally, we would like to address some of the limitations
of this research. As we discussed in the introduction, we
limited the scope of our examination to articles published
in scientific journals by collecting those articles which
include ‘sustainable’ or ‘sustainability’ in the title, abstract,
or keywords. As extensive debates currently continue
among researchers with diverse backgrounds with regard to
the definitions, concepts, and methodologies in sustain-
ability science, this is meant to be a first attempt to examine
quantitatively the overall patterns of collaboration in the
merging field. While this focus on quantitative analysis is
very useful in dealing with a large number of academic
articles published over a relatively long period of time, it
could result in ignoring qualitative aspects which would be
important in grasping a more in-depth understanding of the
nature of this field. For example, public participation
(Kasemir et al. 2003) and social learning (Ta
`bara and
Fig. 8 Clusters in the network of international collaboration on sustainability
122 Sustain Sci (2010) 5:115–125
123
Table 3 Focused fields on sustainability in countries with a large number of publications
US Germany China India Japan
Field n
if
c
if
Field n
if
c
if
Field n
if
c
if
Field n
if
c
if
Field n
if
c
if
Ecology 1,351 2.0 Multidisciplinary
sciences
159 10.9 Soil science 120 2.3 Environmental
sciences
303 6.2 Agronomy 67 3.1
Economics 929 2.0 Agronomy 149 7.9 Plant sciences 100 2.3 Ecology 178 4.3 Agriculture,
multidisciplinary
62 1.9
Planning and
development
573 0.3 Agriculture,
multidisciplinary
112 4.2 Agriculture,
multidisciplinary
134 1.9 Soil science 97 4.0 Soil science 50 1.7
Forestry 498 0.2 Plant sciences 64 2.4 Environmental
sciences
375 1.1 Water resources 117 3.5 Energy and fuels 47 1.7
Environmental
studies
1,096 -0.3 Energy and fuels 68 2.1 Water resources 132 0.9 Plant sciences 71 2.9 Engineering,
environmental
52 0.4
Agronomy 434 -0.5 Soil science 61 1.1 Engineering,
environmental
114 0.5 Geosciences,
multidisciplinary
56 2.6 Water resources 57 0.3
Agriculture,
multidisciplinary
472 -0.8 Water resources 83 0.8 Ecology 202 0.3 Engineering,
environmental
85 1.5 Economics 36 -2.3
Engineering,
environmental
474 -1.1 Environmental
sciences
199 -2.0 Agronomy 91 0.3 Energy and fuels 56 1.0 Ecology 60 -3.5
Environmental
sciences
1,898 -1.3 Ecology 81 -3.5 Economics 108 -0.7 Agriculture,
multidisciplinary
55 -0.6 Environmental
sciences
127 -4.3
Water resources 484 -1.7 Environmental
studies
64 -4.9 Environmental
studies
167 -1.5 Environmental
studies
86 -3.2 Environmental
studies
40 -5.7
Subtotal 8,209 Subtotal 1,543 Subtotal 1,104 Subtotal 1,040 Subtotal 598
All fields 11,013 All fields 1,207 All fields 1,909 All fields 1,220 All fields 891
c
if
is expressed in %
Sustain Sci (2010) 5:115–125 123
123
Pahl-Wostl 2007; Pahl-Wostl et al. 2008) have been
emphasized in the previous literature as crucial aspects of
sustainability science. One way to proceed to the next step
is to focus on only articles that meet one or several of
criteria discussed in sustainability science, such as inter-
disciplinarity and problem-focused approaches, and to
conduct a qualitative analysis with explicit focus on con-
tents. By so doing, we expect that the inter-disciplinary,
problem-oriented nature of sustainability science will be
explored in more detail.
Conclusion
As a preliminary step to conduct an institutional analysis of
the emerging field of sustainability science, this paper
examined quantitatively the patterns of research collabo-
ration in fields related to sustainability over national
boundaries. The results indicate that an increasing number
of countries are engaged in research on sustainability, with
the proportion of articles published through international
collaboration rising as well. The number of countries
engaged in international collaboration on sustainability
research has been increasing, and the diversity of countries
engaged in research collaboration beyond national borders
is also increasing. The geographical patterns of collabora-
tion on sustainability show that research collaboration
tends to be conducted between countries which are geo-
graphically located closely. This suggests that communi-
cation and information exchange might be limited within
the regional clusters.
It is also shown that the focused fields of research
activities on sustainability are significantly different
between countries, as each country has its focused fields of
research related to sustainability. The specialization of
research activities is also observed in international col-
laboration. On the one hand, these patterns of international
collaboration within regional clusters focusing on specific
fields could be effective in promoting the creation, trans-
mission, and sharing of knowledge on sustainability uti-
lizing the already existing regional networks. The
predominance of regional clusters, on the other hand, might
pose a serious obstacle to collecting, exchanging, and
integrating diverse types of knowledge, especially when it
is necessary to deal with problems involving large-scale
complex interactions with long-term implications, such as
climate change.
In that case it, would be of critical importance to
establish inter-regional linkages at the global level. Several
attempts have already been started to set up global schemes
for research collaboration on sustainability science. Among
the new types of organizational and institutional arrange-
ments are the Alliance for Global Sustainability (AGS), an
inter-university research collaboration between the Uni-
versity of Tokyo in Japan, Massachusetts Institute of
Technology (MIT) in the US, Federal Institute of Tech-
nology (ETH) in Switzerland, and Chalmers University of
Technology in Sweden, and the Forum on Science and
Innovation for Sustainable Development hosted by the
American Association for the Advancement of Science
(AAAS). The International Conference on Sustainability
Science (ICSS) has also been established to encourage
communications and knowledge exchange on diverse
issues linked to sustainability science. These emerging
organizational and institutional arrangements will have
significant implications for the future development of
sustainability science, which is chiefly aimed at tackling
the challenge of producing, communicating, and integrat-
ing diverse types of knowledge and expertise for the sus-
tainability of the Earth.
Acknowledgments We are very grateful to the anonymous referees
for their insightful comments and suggestions, which improved
greatly our manuscript. This work was supported by the Ministry of
Education, Culture, Sports, Science, and Technology (MEXT) of
Japan through Special Coordination Funds for Promoting Science and
Technology (Project name: IR3S) and Showa Shell Sekiyu K.K., as a
part of the research project ‘‘Knowledge Structurization for Sustain-
ability Science’’ undertaken by the University of Tokyo.
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Table 4 Focused fields in Japan–China research collaboration on
sustainability
Field Japan–China
(i–j)
Japan (i) China (j)
n
ijf
c
ijf
n
if
c
if
n
jf
c
jf
Water resources 14 20 57 0.3 117 3.5
Plant sciences 6 8 25 -0.1 71 2.9
Ecology 9 7 60 -3.5 178 4.3
Soil science 6 7 50 1.7 97 4.0
Geosciences, multidisciplinary 5 7 14 -0.4 56 3
Agricultural engineering 4 7 11 0.5 10 0.1
Environmental sciences 13 6 127 -4.3 303 6.2
Agronomy 5 5 67 3.1 47 -0.6
Agriculture, multidisciplinary 5 4 62 1.9 55 -0.6
Engineering, civil 3 3 25 0.4 55 2.0
c
ijf
and c
jf
are expressed in %
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