New insights on the relationship between geographic and institutional distance in research collaboration: a long period analysis

This paper analyses the relationship between institutional distance and geographic distance in scientific collaborations, evaluating the possible changes when a long period (sixteen years: from 1990 to 2005) is taken into consideration. It also discusses the use of some alternative measurements of institutional distance. The main result, obtained by analysing the publications of the Italian biotech firms, is that international publications present a higher institutional distance than national papers, particularly in the early years, while there is no significant difference in institutional distance between regional and extra-regional papers, suggesting that opposite incentives are in action at different geographic scales and in different periods.