8.4.3International collaboration with important partners

In Figure 2, we identify countries with whom the Flemish region is likely to have strong ties. These include neighbouring countries and the global scientific powers. As indicated by Figure 2, there has been a growing trend in international collaboration in terms of absolute numbers, both with neighbouring countries and with China and the US. International collaboration with Luxembourg remains consistently low. As Luxembourg is a comparatively small country, it will not be considered in the rest of this dossier. As mentioned, the relative size of the scientific systems of each of the countries included may explain this evolution to a large degree. So far, the US takes up the largest share of international co-publications with Flanders, while neighbouring countries the Netherlands and the UK take up similar shares of collaboration ties in absolute terms. This is remarkable considering the Netherlands has a much smaller research system than the US and the UK, yet collaboration levels are equally as high. This also indicates that the US and UK remain important international partners for scientific collaboration. While international collaboration with China has been increasing as well, it has not yet reached the same levels of collaboration with Flanders.