The use of bibliometric indicators to explore industry-academia collaboration trends over time in the field of membrane use for water treatment

Industry-academia collaboration has become a subject of great interest to academics, industry leaders and policymakers, as it is now acknowledged that such relationships are valuable for innovation. The aim of the study reported here is to explore collaboration trends over time in the field of membrane use for water treatment by carrying out bibliometric analysis of scientific publications related to the field. It is part of a broader project looking at factors that influence industry-academia collaborative research in the water sector. Thousand six hundred and seventy eight papers from eight journals from the years 1967 to 2001 were analysed for co-authorship patterns. Thousand three hundred and seventy papers from the last decade were examined for a snapshot view of inter-institutional, cross-disciplinary, industry-academic and international collaboration trends. Results show that the field is highly collaborative with the majority (87%) of papers involving two or more authors. In terms of industry-academic collaboration, there was an increase in the number of papers from 1994 onwards, and a very high proportion (91%) were cross-disciplinary.