A Multidimensional Proximity Analysis Of The Elements Driving Inter-Institutional Research Collaboration

Research institutions are important subjects in scientific research activities,and research cooperation among different research institutions to achieve the common goal of knowledge innovation has been the focus of research in the field of library intelligence.For the research institutions themselves,choosing peers with similar attributes as their research partners is conducive to reducing the difficulty of communication and improving the efficiency of communication,thus enhancing understanding and trust and improving the efficiency of research output.At present,relatively little attention has been paid to the characteristics of the attributes of different research institutions in the research cooperation network in the domestic library and intelligence discipline,and most studies focus on the analysis of the overall cooperation network dynamics and characteristics,which is not conducive to a deeper understanding of the nature of research cooperation.The concept of multidimensional proximity was introduced by the French school of proximity dynamics,which is essentially a description of the similarity of attributes of research objects.This framework was initially used to analyze regional economic linkages,and was gradually extended by scholars to analyze collaborative innovation relationships.In order to fill the gap of research on inter-institutional research cooperation in the field of library intelligence in China,this paper draws on the five-dimensional proximity analysis framework proposed by Boschma R and other scholars to design research variables based on geographical,technological,social,organizational,and institutional attributes among research institutions,and analyze the influence of similarity of attributes on inter-institutional research cooperation from a multidimensional proximity perspective.In this paper,research papers in the field of cloud computing published by Chinese research institutions in CSSCI and CSCD indexed journals during 2008-2021 were collected as the analysis data,and 2015-2021,when the number of publications is relatively stable,was selected as the analysis window according to the publication situation,and the publication situation from 2008-2014 was used as the data source of control variables.In this paper,we determine the two-two collaborative relationships between research institutions based on the co-occurrence of research institutions in the collected paper title data,and collect,organize and calculate the required data based on the collaborative relationships,and collate a total of 2613 pairs of research collaborative relationships and their proximity data.The data were analyzed by descriptive statistics and correlation analysis,and then OLS regression analysis was applied to investigate the effects of multidimensional proximity factors on the depth of research collaboration and research collaboration performance between institutions and the interactions between factors,and finally,dichotomous variables were designed according to the descriptive statistical characteristics of the variables and robustness tests were conducted using dichotomous logistics regression.In this paper,we found that geographic proximity positively affects the depth of research collaboration,technological proximity positively affects the depth of research collaboration but negatively affects the performance of research collaboration,social proximity affects the opposite direction of technological proximity,organizational proximity positively affects the depth of research collaboration and collaboration performance,and institutional proximity negatively affects the depth of inter-institutional research collaboration.In addition,different dimensions of proximity have diverse and significant interactions on the depth of inter-institutional research collaboration and collaboration performance.Besides,different dimensions of proximity have diverse and significant interaction effects on the depth and performance of inter-institutional research collaboration.The above findings suggest that multidimensional proximity factors have an important impact on inter-institutional research cooperation,and that the current inter-institutional research cooperation is more of a "group warming" type of cooperation,and their willingness to cooperate in major scientific and technological research is not obvious.To this end,research institutions should actively develop knowledge innovation-oriented cooperative relationships,and the relevant authorities should focus on optimizing the science and technology evaluation system,improving regulations on the protection of scientific and technological achievements,and guiding differentiated research cooperation to jointly improve the innovation vitality of research cooperative communities.