Modeling multinational publication: Development of an on-line fractionation approach to measure national scientific output

This study of multinational publication (publications involving authors from more than one country) focuses on a viable method of fractionation, which can be used in on-line bibliometric research. Fractionation occurs when the credit for co-authored papers is added only partially to the total of publications of countries or authors. We attempted to find an empirical relation between the share of a country's papers in some field that is multinationally co-authored and the degree of fractionation which results. A linear regression analysis yielded a significant correlation of -0.95. The fractionation method is the first that can be applied to publication data collected on-line. A comparison is made with fractionation by first author (i.e., first address) counting. Application of the method to British scientific output for 1984-1989 suggests that British output was stable. The fractionation method can be applied to both natural and life sciences and to social and behavioral sciences. Findings suggest that similar processes of multinational publication are prevalent in both types of science. Implications of the model are discussed.