Map of scientific collaborations

My brother pointed to me this map of scientific collaboration between researchers made by  Olivier H. Beauchesne. Inspired by a similar map drawn for facebook friends, O. Beauchesne used a bibliographical database to trace links between universities if their respective researchers were co-authoring articles.

The result is an amazing picture, that shows that, as for many other things, research is unevenly distributed around the world. With a clear North/South divide, research and economic centres overlap almost completely. As expected, North-america, Europe and Japan are the most densely connected areas. Emerging research countries such as India, China, and Brasil can also be recognized. Within Europe, South UK, Paris, the Netherlands, and Switzerland/Austria seem to form research hubs. Perhaps influenced by language and cultural ties, Spain and Portugal are relatively well connected to central and south-American countries.

Barcelona, where my lab is located, appears to be the most densely connected research pole in Spain.