Elevating international collaboration and academic outcomes through strategic research funding: a bibliometric analysis of China Scholarship Council funded publications

Scholars’ international mobility plays a key role in increasing the visibility of scholarly work and academic institutions in the current age of globalization. Previous work has demonstrated that national funding policies can have a significant and positive impact on a country’s global cooperation. The China Scholarship Council (CSC) is a government funding agency established to foster international collaborations among Chinese scholars, particularly in science and technology (S&T) fields critical to modernization. However, there remains a lack of long-term, systematic evaluation of CSC’ performance and impacts. To address this gap, this paper examines the academic outcomes of CSC funding by analyzing bibliometric data from scholarly works published 2008–2022, retrieved from the Web of Science (WoS) database. We found that the number of CSC-funded publications significantly increased during this period, and CSC-funded scholars collaborated with substantially more foreign scholars since the program’s launch compared to other Chinese scholars and the global average. The prevalence of CSC-funded research in S&T fields may be synergistic with broader capacity building efforts, including by enhancing China’s research and development capabilities. Further examining the CSC-funded collaborative network, there is a marked rise in ties with Europe, although the USA remains a key partner. Overall, this study highlights the pivotal role of the CSC in internationalizing China’s research system, positioning the CSC as a model for policymakers who aim to leverage government funding to promote academic achievement through global collaborative research activities.