Sustained Collaboration Between Researchers in Mexico and France in the Field of Chemistry

We analyse the co-authorship and publication patterns of 863 mainstream WoS papers in the field of Chemistry co-authored between Mexican and French institutions from 1984 to 2013 with the purpose of identifying and characterizing the dynamics of sustained collaborative research partnerships in the field between the two countries. From a normalized set of the most productive authors with ≥ 5 co-authorships we selected three Mexican scientists for a detailed analysis of their co-authorship network visualized using Gephi software and its development over time. The first was the most productive Mexican author from the main national university whose collaboration with France spanned the period from 1987-2012, while the second and third researchers work in provincial universities and whose collaboration with France is more recent but lasting 10 and 15 years respectively, and also continues up to the present day. Preliminary results suggest that sustained partnerships are driven by a strong central bond between the Mexican researcher and their foreign partner. In the first two cases, the bond is with directly with a French scientist but in the third, is stronger with an Italian rather than with the French counterpart. Conference Topic Country level studies