Scientific Collaboration on COVID-19 Amidst Geopolitical Tensions between the US and China

As the threat of COVID-19 and US-China tensions are increasing, this study focused on this intensifying intersection between geopolitics and global science in the midst of a pandemic. This scientometric study examined the US’ and China’s international collaboration patterns on science and engineering (S&E) COVID-19 articles through the lenses of scientific nationalism and scientific globalism. While scientific nationalism would assume that the current political rhetoric and protectionist policies would lead to a decrease in international collaboration, our findings showed the reverse. The world’s proportion of international collaborations generally increased. Findings also revealed that despite geopolitical tensions, the highest number of internationally coauthored S&E COVID-19 articles between two countries involve the US and China. Their collaboration rate on COVID-19 is higher than during the past five-years as well as on non-COVID-19 articles published during 2020.