The internet was supposed to make distance irrelevant, but it actually made being physically close to other scientists more important than ever.
April 3, 2026
Original Paper
Persistent geographical biases in global scientific collaboration and citations
arXiv · 2604.01602
The Takeaway
Despite instant global communication, scientists are increasingly likely to collaborate with people nearby rather than across the globe. Geography has become a stronger constraint over the last two decades, contradicting the idea that digital tools have erased borders.
From the abstract
Scientific knowledge flows enable cumulative progress by connecting researchers across disciplines, institutions, and countries. Yet it remains unclear how geography and national structures continue to shape these exchanges in an increasingly connected world. Using a large-scale bibliometric dataset from OpenAlex, which covers 39.35 million publications across 95 countries and 3,794 cities between 2000 and 2022, we examine global knowledge diffusion through two complementary channels: co-authors