The Exchange of Knowledge

Abstract

This article explores in what ways and to what extent a small country is integrated in international science. It gives an overview of various types of contact between academic staff members at Norwegian universities and their colleagues abroad, including which countries are the most important for such contact, and shows to what degree faculty members in different fields of learning publish internationally. Faculty members in the social sciences and humanities have almost as many close contacts with foreign researchers as do their colleagues in the natural and physical sciences, but the extent of international publishing is considerably lower in the humanities and social sciences. The reasons for these field differences are discussed.