Models of Internationalization of Higher Education in Developing Countries—A Perspective of International Research Collaboration in BRICS Countries

Abstract

This study explored the international research collaboration in BRICS’s leading universities and their performance in the past decade. Based on the literature on the international educational policies in BRICS countries and the world university rankings, we select the top research universities of each BRICS country. We use the Scopes database, and the timespan of our research covers 2012–2021 years, which allows us to identify the critical points in international research collaborations in terms of research scale, quantity, impact, collaborative networks, and subject areas. We find that all BRICS countries have increased their international collaboration and production of international collaborative publications at varying degrees of growth. The research quality and impact of international cooperation in scientific publications in China and India have rapidly improved and enhanced. The other three countries are improving their research impact, yet their research quality has been limited or declined worldwide. Meanwhile, geopolitical factors, disciplinary advantages, and scientific and technological development need to influence the paths of international research collaborations in developing countries. As they integrate within global higher education, BRICS countries are beginning to establish their own distinctive academic and scientific development paths by actively participating in the international academic discourse.

1. Introduction

Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa (BRICS) are among the most powerful and fastest growing emerging markets. Their economic potential is so great that they could become among the four most dominant economies by 2050. As representatives of emerging markets and developing countries, BRICS have emerged as a group, contributing more than 50% to world economic growth, with an estimated 26.7% of the world land surface and 41.5% of the world population [1]. These five countries are also expanding rapidly, and many observers see them as ascendant economies in the coming decades [2].

The emerging pressures in these developing countries as they go through economic transition continue to stimulate the quest to develop a solid knowledge base. As Marginson [3] points out, this paradigm of higher education is derived from the notion that science is a site of relations of power determined mainly by economic and military power. With under-resources on most academic systems, BRICS are facing dilemmas, such as the transformation of higher education and the support of large-scale or high-quality research universities [4,5,6,7]. They are rushing headlong toward economic success and modernization, counting on research universities such as information technology and biotechnology to foster prosperity. Furthermore, globalization has added a new dimension to existing disparities in higher education, and internationalization has become one of the essential goals in developing higher education [8,9]. During the past half-century, internationalization has evolved from a marginal activity to a critical aspect of the reform agenda [8]. BRICS countries have implemented direct and indirect educational internationalization policies to meet the needs of their educational modernization and global challenges. They all promote the globalization and internationalization of higher education policies toward providing more solid talent support for science and technology innovation cooperation.

Building research universities modernizes the higher education system in BRICS countries. Research universities are central institutions in any knowledge- and technology-intensive society because they are key to a world-class higher education system. Their future is reasonably bright [10]. Universities in developing countries are building institutional competence by pursuing to build research-intensive universities [11]. The limited wealth of BRICS countries, academic research production, and government support remain concentrated mainly among a handful of institutions. The “research-university model” is becoming the standard that most universities aspire [5,12,13]. Excellence initiatives in China, Russia, and India will allow the rapid building of their research universities in the new global knowledge environment and desire them to be the high-level universities in the world. These universities are selected by excellence initiatives aiming to build world-class universities (WCUs) to increase their chances of better collaboration with highly ranked universities worldwide.

The results of the education internationalization policies in the BRICS countries have enhanced international research collaboration directly. As Altbach [10] mentioned, excellence initiatives as an essential strategy in higher education can increase international collaborations by highlighting the importance of research universities in developing countries and the number of publications in journals cited in international indexes. For example, the rapid growth of R&D inputs and outputs allowed China to increase its presence in the global arena with the status of a new “scientific superpower” from 2000 to 2018. China has an international collaboration rate of 22%, compared to 39% in the USA. Of all China’s international collaborations in 2018, approximately 44% collaborated with USA authors [14]. In addition, the links between international co-authorship and citation performance motivate scientists and nations to collaborate. In particular, peripheral nations [15,16] use world-system concepts when investigating agency and dependency in emerging countries, although they find that citation counts, author order, and the proportion of papers that involve international authorship are blunt tools for studying relations of power. We insist that international research collaboration has become more “visible” in internationally recognized publications [17].

In summary, BRICS countries have made remarkable progress in their scientific and technological development and educational modernization in recent decades. The paths and characteristics of international research collaboration chosen by each BRICS country in the context of modernization moving from the margin to the center of global higher education remain uncertain. Furthermore, international research collaboration directly stimulates the higher education of the BRICS countries, moving into the center of higher education. However, the short- and long-term impacts and achievement of collaboration in BRICS remain unclear. To fill the research gap, this exploratory study addresses the following research questions: (1) What is the decade impact and future trends of the research collaboration on the research output of BRICS’s top universities with the globalization and internationalization of higher education policy? (2) What is the collaboration in the research networks led by the top universities in the BRICS countries, especially with excellence initiative investments by the governments? (3) What are the research fields and characteristics of BRICS’ international research collaboration?

These selected top research universities based on national excellence initiatives and global rankings represent the national scientific and research strengths and developmental paths of BRICS countries, and we analyze the characteristics of collaborative publications from 2011 to 2020. They have also been used to predict future trends in international research collaborations. In the following sections, we present the literature review and the primary data, describe the methods, provide an explanation of the results, and conclude with a summary of the findings, contributions, and limitations.

2. Literature Review

2.1. Policies for Educational Internationalization in BRICS Countries

Table 1 shows the direct and indirect education international policies enhance the international research collaboration and modernization of higher education in varying degrees in the BRICS countries.

Most developing countries directly enact programs for educational internationalization to promote the progress of education modernization. We count the relevant programs in BRICS countries that have accelerated the development of science and technology innovation and collaboration in recent decades. China has identified internationalization as an essential strategy for the long-term development of higher education in the National Medium- and Long-Term Education Reform and Development Plan (2010–2020) in 2010. This plan has created a favorable policy environment for enhancing education internationalization and strengthening international innovation and cooperation [18]. In 2016, India introduced the New National Education Policy within the national policy agenda for the first time to actively promote the internationalization of higher education and to establish India as “a superpower with knowledge” [19]. South Africa published the “Policy Framework for the Internationalization of Higher Education in South Africa” in 2017 [20]. This framework proposed a comprehensive and integrated policy framework for the internationalization of education and promoted international research collaboration to enhance higher education’s reputation and innovation capacity. Brazil also announced its new internationalization program, “More Science and More Development” instead of “Science without Frontiers” in 2017, which focused on fostering highly qualified young talents with innovative capabilities and encouraged strengthening research cooperation and talent exchange [21]. Russia announced a particular program in 2017 for the development of Russia’s educational export potential [22], with a focus on expanding international students and building WCUs as a strategy for internationalizing education.

Excellence initiatives to create WCUs are one of the indirect policies for educational internationalization in developing countries. BRICS countries all attempt to achieve the development of educational internationalization, varying from China’s intense effort to South Africa’s least effort, and seem to evolve toward this ambition of educational modernization, as top research universities have become the center point of the development agenda. The governments of China, Russia, and India have brought about differentiation within national systems by separating a top group of world-class-level universities from other local research universities [23]. These elite groups, as national teams, get a long-term national commitment to funding and resource supplements. China has spent nearly USD 6 billion in programs dedicated to creating WCUs since 1999, including the “985 Project” and the “Double-World-First-Class University Plan” [24,25]. These plans strongly emphasize reinforcing the qualifications of academic staff through having them spend long periods overseas (above all, in English-speaking countries), incentives for publishing in international journals, and recruitment of foreign teaching and research staff for their universities [14,26,27]. Russia funded RUB 2 billion for Moscow State University and St. Petersburg State University from 2014 to 2016 and made up a total of RUB 60.5 billion rubles for the selected universities of the “5–100 projects” intended to increase the international competitiveness of the top higher education institutions in the world [28]. The “5–100 project” aims to improve the prestige of Russian higher education and bring at least five universities from among the 21 participants into the hundred best universities in the world according to the three most authoritative world rankings [29,30]. The Institutes of Eminence is a recognition scheme for higher education institutes in India, set by the University Grants Commission in 2017 [31]. The plan encompasses 20 institutions, 12 of which have already been declared Institutes of Eminence as of 2021. The main objective of initiatives for excellence is to achieve better integration into the global academic domain with the same goal: the promotion of transnational technological education, which has become a new educational norm in late modernity [8].

However, South Africa and Brazil have chosen another indirect strategy to improve their top universities and higher education systems. Brazil does not follow global trends to pursue “excellence initiatives”, which is the paradigm of higher education in most developing countries [32,33]. The Brazilian government has focused on improving the quality of higher education, with a focus on national outcomes and increasing the number and quality of doctoral education [32]. Brazil’s current strategies for international collaboration in higher education follow variegated domestic goals that encompass the logic of foreign policy and the internal priorities of federal research and education agencies [34]. With a lack of the nation’s policy aspiration in South Africa, top universities, such as the University of Cape Town and the University of the Witwatersrand, launched their own new missions and strategies focused on making themselves either WCUs or providers of world-class research services [35]. However, there is no direct evidence to invest financial and policy resources in the WCU movement’s transformation of higher education in South Africa [20,36].

The growing achievements for international collaboration and academic excellence reflect in ranking systems. Research universities in BRICS countries have become more competitive and impactive globally in recent decades with the support of international educational policies. The WCU has become the cure to guarantee worldwide economic success based on the characteristics of the top 20, 50, or 100 internationally ranked universities [37]. For example, the number of Russian universities in the international institutional rankings, such as the Academic Ranking of World Universities (ARWU), the Quacquarelli, Symonds (QS) World University Ranking, and the Times Higher Education (THE) World University Rankings, increased more than threefold, from 15 to 51 in 2016 [38]. Tsinghua University stated that it had spent nine years putting itself in the ranks of world-first-class universities by 2011 and ended up with one of the top universities by the year 2020, ranking top 30 in the world [39]. Global rankings are an essential instrument for exercising power in service of dominant norms in global higher education [40] and a valuable lens for studying power and international collaboration in higher education. Global university rankings have also become an essential and significant signal to indicate the emerging transformation of BRICS’ top universities from the margin to the center of the world in a decade [3,15,40,41].

2.2. Paradigms for Educational Internationalization in BRICS Countries

There are two debated paradigms to explain the development of the internationalization of education in BRICS countries: the center–peripheral theory and the multipolar theory. The center–periphery paradigm of higher education is the primary model to explain the path of higher education that the developing countries choose. Wallerstein’s [42] world systems theory can be applied to science, and the countries of the center in the USA, UK, and parts of Western Europe reproduce their dominance by maintaining the permanent subordination of science on the periphery. He stated that the position of individual countries could be understood only in terms of the “totality” of worldwide capitalist economic relations. Based on this view, Altbach expressed his opinion on applying the center–periphery paradigm to higher education [43]. He distinguished two dimensions: centers and peripheries among nations and centers and peripheries within national university systems. The world of centers and peripheries grows ever more complex [44]. The major international academic centers occupy the top tier, namely, the leading research-oriented universities in the north, especially those using one of the vital world languages (mainly English). The tiered system fits with the operating pragmatics, dreams, and imaginings of the usually experienced world of science, in which Stanford or Oxford is at the center [45,46].

The center–periphery paradigm is often referenced in the development of global higher education. It is more difficult for developing countries to become significant players in international higher education to achieve “center” status in many ways. The price of entry into the center has risen. Top-tier research universities require vast resources and involve significant investment in laboratory facilities and equipment in many scientific research fields [47]. Excellence initiatives especially accelerate and enhance the universities in emerging countries into the center of global higher education. University excellence initiatives are becoming increasingly popular national R&D policies globally, with 23 nations implementing some form of excellence initiative from 1995 to 2013 [48]. Cai [49] observed that the WCU strategy had become an essential part of higher education discourse, and there is a shift from institutional quality to systemic excellence.

Prior findings indicate that the significant financial resources provided to the selected and designated WCUs increased their volume and rate of publication of scientific papers overall and research collaboration. These resources have a significant positive effect on universities’ research performance. For example, the 5–100 project in Russia has had a positive effect on publications in the highest and lowest quality journals and on multi-authored publications. Participating universities have increased their number of publications, especially in high-quality journals written in co-authorship with other organizations [50]. Zhang [25] found that Chinese “world-first-class” universities focus their strategic collaboration overwhelmingly on prestigious global partners. They used to compare themselves with their prominent Western peers and chase after their peers in the “centers,” mainly in North America and Europe. Altbach and Salmi [10] informed that there are exceptional fast movers who achieve excellence in a relatively short time—they clearly define themselves as centers of excellence.

There are growing studies questioning the center–periphery paradigm in science and social science. In some scientific studies, the center and periphery function acts as accelerators [24] and hierarchy tiers [51]. Scholars have found that China’s international collaboration grew fast in technological innovation, such as in physics and molecular biology [14,52]. Marginson and Xu [15] claimed that Euro-American dominance will still permanently constrain the STEM fields in emerging countries. In addition, the center–periphery idea is invoked in critical social science studies. In social science disciplines, the Eurocentric culture imposes directly on the work of scholars from outside Euro-America, with a different outlook. They have less presence in global publishing than their counterparts in the physical sciences [53,54]. The scale and growth of international collaboration in the social sciences in China are limited, as engagement in the global social sciences and humanities may depend heavily on the capacity of individual scientists to handle cross-cultural, bilingual, or multilingual communication [24,25,55].

Ignoring the autonomy of global relations and the agency of nations, related studies in recent years negating the center–periphery model can explain the real dominant imagery of global development [3,52]. Global science is increasingly becoming multi-polar with the rise of Asian systems, such as Singapore, South Korea, and China. Furthermore, we see the breakthrough of China to a leading global role without networking intensively across the Euro-American “center” and the rise of autonomous systems in India, Iran, South Korea, and Brazil, where national collaboration has often been more generative than global collaboration [51,56,57]. As noted, the global North–South polarity is being supplemented in the multi-polar setting by the East–South, East–West, and China–India axes [58,59,60]. The center–periphery paradigm fails to grasp the dynamics of the specifically global system, and radically underestimates agency outside the “center” countries, as shown by the way nation-states and autonomous researchers on the “semi-periphery” and “periphery” have been able to rapidly develop science [15].

3. Methods and Material

3.1. Methods

We employ a comprehensive analysis of international research collaboration in BRICS countries over the last decade, in which previous studies have not been addressed and compared. As an exploratory study, we explore the models and collaboration to analyze the paths with a bibliometric approach.

Scientometrics involves the investigation of scientific networks using quantitative analyses of bibliometric data in global and national science [61,62,63]. In this study, we use scientometric approaches to analyze the number of their publication and international research collaboration contributions to the process of global higher education, the quality of collaborations measured by research quality and research impact indicators, the role of performance of research universities in the cluster, discipline structure and scientific specialization of collaboration, and similarities and differences on the path of international research collaboration in each BRICS country.

We use a wide range of bibliometric indicators for three research objects: research scale, research quality, and research impact. Borrowing from Zhang et al.’s article [25], these three indicators explored the international research collaboration led by China’s WCUs. The number of publications and international research collaboration indicators belong to the research scale. Field-weighted citation impact (FWCI) and top 1%, 5%, and 10% journal percentile indicators measure research quality. The FWCI indicates how the number of citations received by an article compares to the average or expected number of citations received by other similar publications. Similar publications are determined by year, type, and discipline. The percentage of publications of a selected entity that has been published in the world’s top 1%, 5%, or 10% journals are also determined. The citations per publication and outputs in the top 10% citation percentile define the research impact. Based on three research objects, we can analyze the trends and characteristics in publication and international research collaboration through comparisons between countries and institutions and explore the role of excellent research universities in BRICS countries from the margin to the center of global higher education.

We also apply research collaboration network approaches [64] to analyze the network relationships and interaction patterns between participants and collaborative networks. This study clarifies the status of national collaboration networks led by BRICS’s excellence initiatives. We visualize data in the form of different illustrative graphs, including colored tables, to make our research accessible. The empirical part of the article is structured as follows. First, we provide an overview of BRICS countries’ publications and international research collaborations by measuring their research scale and quality in different periods. Second, we measure the research discipline structure of research collaboration versus each other and different periods. The third part is an analysis of influential universities in BRICS collaborating pairs.

3.2. Material

The WCUs of the BRICS countries and the global universities’ rankings of the evaluation of academic quality are built to define the criteria that guide the selection of research universities in the study. The two selection criteria of the research universities in this study were the following:

We select research universities that have been chosen as national team members of the excellence initiative in BRICS countries. According to the relevant policies mentioned above, the selected universities must be arranged in terms of criteria that the list’s compilers believed measure or reflect the academic quality represented in each country. Based on the WCU strategies, we choose China, Russia, and India research universities. There are 42 “world-class-university” universities as the group of pioneers in China. Moscow State University and St Petersburg State University and 21 participants of the “5–100 Project,” which would receive government support and funding, are chosen in Russia. Based on the “Institute of Eminence project” in India, we chose 20 excellent universities, including 10 public research universities and 10 private universities, among which 12 have already been declared Institutes of Eminence in 2021. As members of the national team in these three countries, they have a prominent and emerging position in their higher education systems.

Considering the limitation or lack of excellence initiatives in the BRICS countries, we also select and add the universities that ranked the top 1000 in at least two of the four most authoritative world rankings. With different global rankings and varied statistical coverage, we carefully select universities. In accordance with methodological advances in academic rankings approaches, these four international university rankings are selected. The integration of the four global ranking scales, including the ARWU, the QS, the THEs, and the U.S. News, allows us to select the top research universities in each BRICS country. A comparative analysis of the four rankings is presented, considering the indicators’ frequencies and weights. The indicators differ considerably across selected rankings, and many indicators are unique. Furthermore, the indicators referring to research and scientific productivity from university academic staff have a prominent role across all approaches. Based on the criteria of our study, 7 other research universities in India, 25 research universities in Brazil, and 23 universities in South Africa are selected.

We choose the Elsevier Scopus database, and the timespan of our research covers the years 2011–2020, which allows us to identify the key points in developing the research collaboration of the selected research universities over the last decade. The Elsevier Scopus database is categorized into 334 subject areas belonging to 27 disciplines, including life science, social sciences and humanities, physical sciences, health sciences, and multidisciplinary fields [65]. Elsevier SciVal contains a database populated by publication data taken from the Elsevier Scopus database. The information contained in the publications (author, institution, etc.) is used to create the other portions of the database. The SciVal calculates the numbers of useful comparative metrics from the citation and publication data. These provide excellent comparison points for both nations and institutions [66]. Based on SciVal’s data criteria, this study retrieves the publication data of each selected research university in the BRICS countries. The publication types included articles, reviews, conference papers, books, and book chapters.

4. Findings

4.1. Overview of International Research Collaboration in BRICS Countries

Table 2 provides a descriptive summary of the research scale, quality, and impact indicators of the total publications and international collaboration publications of selected research university groups in the BRICS countries. In general, the international collaborative publications of BRICS countries perform considerably better than their national scientific publications overall in terms of quantity, quality, and scale, as listed in Table 2. Regarding publication, the highest number of international collaborative publications from BRICS countries is China, followed by Brazil, South Africa, Russia, and India. China, with the highest number, has three times more publications than Brazil, and eight times that of India, which ranks fifth. The country with the highest ratio of international collaboration publications to total publications is South Africa (47.71%), followed by Brazil (36.56%), Russia (31.66%), China (25.72%), and India (20.01%). The country with the highest number of publications per university is South Africa, followed by Brazil, Russia, China, and India. We are surprised that the international collaborative publications of Indian research universities are the least among the BRICS countries in terms of research scale.

In terms of both research quality and impact indicators, the international collaborative publications of the BRICS countries’ research universities perform significantly better than the overall performance of research publications in each country. The FWCI of international collaborative publications is nearly twice as high as the overall value of national research publications. The top 10% of journal values are also several times higher than the overall value of national research publications. The citation per publication and top 10 citations of international collaborative publications in BRICS countries are more than 1.5 times the overall value of national scientific publications.

4.2. Analysis of Scale Indicators

Figure 1 shows the research scale and impact of international collaborative publications in the selected research universities. The number of international collaboration publications has increased significantly over the past decade (2012–2021), but the predicted trends in each country differ significantly, as shown in Figure 1f. India has the most rapid increase in the number of international collaborative publications among BRICS countries, followed by Brazil, South Africa, China, and Russia. Russia is the only BRICS country with a drop in the number of international collaborative publications published in the past two years. Its number of international collaborative publications in 2021 is 171, which is smaller than in 2020. Forecasting by the polynomial method, the forward 3 years of trendlines of China, Brazil, and India could continuously climb from 2012 to 2021, and the trendline of South Africa could be slowly climbing, except the declining trend of Russia.

4.3. Analysis of Quality and Impact Indicators

Figure 2 shows that the research impact in all five countries has increased over the decade, but the research quality has differed. From the perspective of research impact indicators, the research impact of all five BRICS countries has increased to different degrees, especially in 2021 compared to 2012. China’s top 10% of highly cited papers increased by 4.9%. The ranking of this indicator in India also increased from third place in 2012 to second place in 2021. Russia’s research impact increased significantly and ranked fourth in 2021 after a slight regression in 2016. Brazil and South Africa maintained stable growth from 2012 and placed third and fifth in 2021.

Regarding research quality, the top 10% citation percentiles in India, China, and Brazil have all improved differently. India maintained a similar research quality in 2021 as in 2016, increasing more than in 2012. In Brazil, South Africa, and Russia, this indicator significantly decreased in 2021 relative to 2016, increasing slightly from 2012. According to another research quality indicator, the FWCI in these five countries also changed significantly. Ranking first in BRICS in 2021, the FWCI of India improved from 1.64 to 1.99, with an increase of 19.9%. China and Brazil are 1.94 and 1.75, increasing by 0.27 and 0.05 from 2012, respectively. However, the FWCI of Russia and South Africa in 2021 decreased. The FWCI of South Africa decreased from 2.42 in 2012 to 1.66 in 2021—a decline of 31.3%.

In summary, China, India, and Brazil are the countries where the research impact and quality of international collaborative publications have increased over the last decade. China has significantly advanced in BRICS, and India has great potential in the future. However, the research quality of Russia and South Africa declined. In particular, the FWCI of South Africa dropped significantly.

4.4. Analysis of Subject Distribution

Table 3 shows the top 10 subjects with the most prominent international collaboration publications of BRICS countries over the decade. This shows that China and India are relatively similar in the subject areas of international collaboration publications, mainly focusing on advanced traditional engineering subjects, such as electrical engineering, biology, chemistry, environment, and materials. This shows that Brazil and South Africa focus more on biology and medicine, whereas Russia concentrates on advanced domestic subjects, such as physics and optics.

In summary, there are three common disciplines in which all five countries have made significant progress in international collaborative publications: condensed matter physics, electrical, electronic engineering, and general chemistry. These figures present significant differences in the subject areas of international collaboration publications of BRICS countries. The primary subjects of the publications are “electrical and electronic engineering” in China and India in international collaboration; “ecology, evolution, behavior, and systematics” in Brazil and South Africa; and “condensed matter physics” in Russia.

4.5. Collaboration with Other Countries/Regions

Figure 3 displays the international collaboration networks of each country over the decade. Commonly, BRICS countries have mainly collaborated with “center” countries in the last decade and increasingly collaborated with outside “center” countries/regions as well. The United States and the United Kingdom are the countries where China, Brazil, South Africa, and India cooperate the most. In contrast, Russia collaborates the most with Germany, followed by the United States. Russia’s other closest collaborators are France and China. China has close collaborations with Hong Kong, China, Australia, and Canada. Brazil’s other closest collaborators are Germany, France, and Spain. India’s other closest collaborators are Germany, China, and South Korea. South Africa’s other closest collaborators are Australia, Germany, and France.

Table 4 also shows BRICS’s top 10 international collaboration countries in 2012, 2016, and 2021. In addition to accelerating collaboration with academic centers in Europe and the United States, except Brazil, the four other countries also have increasing collaboration with neighboring countries/regions. China maintains solid collaboration with academic centers in Europe and the United States and rapidly increases international collaboration with neighboring countries/regions, such as Hong Kong, China, Japan, Singapore, and Pakistan. Similarly, India has strengthened its collaboration with neighboring countries/regions in Asia, such as Saudi Arabia, China, South Korea, and Malaysia. In 2021, collaboration with Saudi Arabia and China was second only to that of the United Kingdom and the United States. Russia mainly engages in international collaboration with the United States and neighboring European countries/regions. Its collaboration with Germany and China ranked first and third in 2021, respectively, and its collaboration with India increased. South African countries also increased Nigeria’s collaboration in 2021.

In summary, the map of the international collaboration network indicates that, except for Russia, the other four countries all take the United States and the United Kingdom as the collaboration centers to expand and extend the collaboration. Russia closely collaborates with Germany, but its collaboration with other countries is not apparent.

4.6. Analysis of Institutional Contribution

Table 5 presents the top three national universities with the most contributions to international collaboration publications of the BRICS countries over the decade. Brazil, South Africa, and Russia all have one or two flagship universities contributing the majority of international collaboration publications. For example, the international collaboration publications of Universidade de Sao Paulo and Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul in the past ten years accounted for 23.37% and 18.47% of Brazil, and the University of Cape Town and University of the Witwatersrand accounted for 18.77% and 14.18% of South Africa, respectively. Moscow State University accounted for 20.36% of Russia. In summary, the one or two flagship universities in these three nations contributed more to international collaboration publications in the past ten years.

However, China and India do not have such flagship universities as the other three countries, given that their top three universities are relatively balanced in the contribution of international collaboration publications without universities exceeding 10%.

Table 6 shows the top three international universities among the selected universities’ contributions to international collaboration publications in BRICS countries over the decade. According to the distribution of international collaboration universities, the United States and the United Kingdom, the centers of higher education, are the two international collaboration institutions that BRICS countries collaborate with the most.

Furthermore, geographical factors are a significant consideration for these five countries. For example, international universities with the most considerable contribution to international collaboration publications in China cluster in Hong Kong, China, and Singapore, which are close to China’s mainland. The Université Paris-Saclay, Charles University, and Charles University are the top three most considerable institutions contributing to international collaboration in Russia. The Université Paris-Saclay and King Saud University have the two most significant contributions to international collaboration in India.

5. Discussion

This article explores the paths of educational internationalization in BRICS as the center–periphery paradigm. Based on the international research collaborations of the top research universities of the BRICS in the decade, we analyze the paths and characteristics of internationalization of higher education in terms of publication scale, quality, impact, disciplinary areas, and characteristics of collaborative networks.

Consistent with the center–periphery model used in global higher education, the international collaborative publications of top research universities in BRICS have shown an impressive increase in research scale, quality, and impact in the last decade. Previous research has pointed out that cooperation with the countries of global higher education centers is conducive to the expansion of academic networks, and it is a common path for developing countries to enhance their scientific and technological strength quickly and enter global development centers [8,11,65]. Our study also reflects that all BRICS countries have increased their international collaboration, and the increasing rate and research impact of international collaborative publications has maintained steady growth. Direct education international policies are crucially important for developing countries to accelerate the integration of global higher education and sustain educational modernization. International collaboration among scientists has been passionately advocated by many in the developing world. We also admit that among the several conditions that support collaboration among members of a dispersed scientific community, internet technology has been the most crucial, especially for developing countries since 2000 [67,68,69].

International research collaboration in these five developing countries is beginning to demonstrate internal and external differences. The international collaborative publications of the top universities in these countries significantly outperformed the overall performance of scientific publications in each country. It also indicates that the top universities in the BRICS countries not only represent their top scientific strength and major scientific research power, but also become the mainstays to enter the world’s international higher education centers. Notably, the higher education system in Brazil, South Africa, and Russia is significantly imbalanced. Based on the contribution of top universities within the BRICS countries, we are surprised to find that the top one or two flagship universities in Brazil, South Africa, and Russia have contributed most of the international collaborative publications in their own countries in the last decade. In contrast, the contributions of the top universities in China and India are relatively balanced in terms of the number of international collaborative publications. This would influence the resources and trends of these countries when they integrate into the academic centers of the world. Dias and Serafim [70] concluded that the science and technology policy in Brazil has followed a steady course over the last few decades, regardless of each government’s particular orientation. Furthermore, there has been some change in the discourse surrounding the STP in Brazil, but the policy’s agenda itself has not changed significantly. South Africa lacks a clear articulation of transformation, accompanied by the absence of indicators and targets to track progress over time [36].

We find that BRICS countries have chosen various paths in the process of integrating global higher education. Although cooperation with the central countries is currently dominant, our findings indicate that BRICS countries are beginning toward multipolar scientific research collaborations. The geopolitical factor is becoming remarkable and is influencing the various paths of internationalization collaboration in developing countries. It is necessary for a nation to pass through research collaboration and structure itself adequately to reach the universal system—a path desired by countries [8,52,71]. We emphasize that the geopolitical factor [41,51,72] also determines international research collaboration in BRICS. For example, China disseminates local issues and solutions to the world, enabling it to reconcile global engagement with its own characteristics [25]. Besides the academic center factor, geopolitical factors also significantly influence their choice of scientific cooperation. We find that China, Brazil, South Africa, and India have tightly cooperated with developed Western countries, mainly the United States and the United Kingdom, in the last decade. However, Russia mainly cooperates more closely with Germany. From the perspective of top research universities’ cooperation, the geopolitical factor is also more specifically significant in the top research universities of BRICS countries. The study found that China cooperates closely with universities in Asia, such as those located in Hong Kong, China, and Singapore. The top research universities in Russia mainly cooperate with universities in Europe, and the top universities in India also collaborate with the universities in Middle Asia and Europe.

The disciplines of international research collaborations also proved the diversity of the development paths of these five countries. As these developing countries undergo economic transitions, the emerging pressures in these countries continue to stimulate the quest to develop a strong knowledge base. Considering the international policy rationale of education and the need for technology [70], the subject areas of cooperation in BRICS vary. The growing youth population and the ever-increasing competition in the knowledge space in Brazil and India, the solid scientific basis in Russia, the established academia in South Africa, and the demands for innovation of massive industrialization in China continue to provide hope and reforms of higher education systems and build ivory towers of excellence [13]. According to the international cooperation network mapping of BRICS countries, the disciplinary directions in China and India mainly focus on traditional strengths, such as electrical engineering and biochemical and environmental materials. Brazil and South Africa, in contrast, are focused on biology and medicine. Russia tends to focus on physics and optics, which are its scientific research strengths. We are surprised that the scale and impact of international collaboration publications of social sciences and humanities in these five countries are still limited. In summary, international collaborations should be closely related to national development needs and the foundations of scientific development in developing countries.

Prior researchers have stated that developing countries are always faced with the dilemma of catering to mass demand while at the same time maintaining and enhancing quality. In particular, the academic power in Asia’s higher education system will rise along with economic and political expansion [73]. For example, with several stages of excellent initiatives, China has strongly emphasized elevating WCU groups into the ranks of the international elite with continuous support [24,25]. The globalization of universities, exemplified by the world ranking of higher education institutions and the attendant quest for global relevance, among other factors, indicates that South Africa had to abandon this agenda in favor of internationalization [74]. The central government in India has initially selected and supported the top research universities in recent years, but coordination and investment among the states and provinces is sparse [5,75]. In Russia, the government provides inadequate funding support for their top research universities, particularly compared with the funding support of China [29]. This study reflects the fact that international research collaboration varies. The number of international collaborative publications in China is significantly high, yet the growth rate in the last three years has started to slow down slightly. The number of international collaborative publications in India is small, with a low percentage, yet its number of international collaborative publications has increased significantly and rapidly in recent years. Russia is the only country in BRICS whose number of international collaboration publications has decreased slightly in the last two years.

The trends of these five countries will vary significantly in the future. Comparing 2012 with 2020, our study proves that the research quality and impact of international cooperation in scientific publications in China and India have rapidly improved and enhanced. The other three countries are improving their research impact, but their research quality has been limited or declined worldwide. It is useful to advance the research impact through international research collaboration, but it is still limited to continuously advancing the quality of their research. For example, the research impact of South Africa, Russia, and Brazil has increased significantly, yet the research quality of South Africa and Russia has declined, and that of Brazil has maintained the same in 2012. Our findings also suggest that South Africa declined its research impact and quality. Altbach [76] discussed that India has the potential advantage of using English as the medium of instruction for more than half of the higher education system if India has an internalization strategy. In the future, Russia would be slow and stagnant in its higher education system, dramatically following the Russia–Ukraine War [77]. Brazil and South Africa lack sustainable and direct strategies to improve their research universities, and their national governments seemingly have little interest in enhancing the impact of international research collaboration [33,78]. The recent call for decolonization and Africanization of the curriculum was ignited by the 2015 #FeesMustFall student-led movement in South Africa. Increased collaboration among African universities is important if African solutions are to be applied to African challenges, as such partnerships can potentially have wider impacts on continent-wide policymaking and implementation [79].

6. Conclusions

This study explores the international collaborative publications of BRICS countries during the decade. The findings are that the BRICS countries are integrating actively to the center from the periphery of academia established by Western countries, as Altbach pointed out in the paradigm. In terms of international research collaborations, BRICS countries have effectively increased the scale, quality, and impact of scientific research, actively linking to global scientific networks. Notably, in the process of developing countries’ academic networks, BRICS countries have been able to enhance their academic output, quality, and impact through international cooperation. This paper also confirms that top research universities, as the leading force representing national academic cooperation and competition, can enhance academic output, strengthen academic quality, and improve global impact through international cooperation. It also demonstrates that the direct policies of international education policies enrich the excellence initiatives to build WUCs as an essential strategy to realize the educational modernizations in BRICS and impact on national and global education development.

Our findings highlight that global scientific networks are expanding and becoming more complex. The center–periphery theory can no longer sufficiently explain the BRICS countries, their top universities, and their research cooperation trends. Our study identifies that geopolitical factors, disciplinary advantages, and scientific and technological development needs influence the path of international research collaborations in developing countries. Indeed, BRICS countries are beginning to establish their own distinctive paths of academic and scientific development by actively participating in the international academic discourse. Although science is an arms race between competing nations, this study makes it evident that emerging countries are trying to seek their unique and distinctive paths, breaking the Euro-American dominance hierarchy in science. There are limitations to measuring international collaboration by research indicators and using descriptive statistical analysis. Further research should involve conducting statistical inferences to reveal the influences of multiple factors, such as the countries’ political, economic, historical, linguistic, and cultural factors on emerging countries’ academic development and characteristics.

Author Contributions

Overall research design and conceptualization, H.L. and D.Z.; methodology, H.L., D.Z. and X.F.; formal analysis, X.F.; resources, Y.W. (Yang Wang); data curation, X.F. and Y.W. (Yang Wang); writing to original draft preparation, H.L., X.F. and Y.W. (Yawen Wan). All authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript.

Institutional Review Board Statement

Not applicable.

Informed Consent Statement

Not applicable.

Data Availability Statement

Publicly available datasets were analyzed in this study. These data can be found here: https://www.scopus.com (data-collection time from 2 to 10 July 2022).

Conflicts of Interest

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

Publisher’s Note: MDPI stays neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

Figures and Tables

Figure 1. International collaborative publications and citations of BRICS countries over the decade: (a) Brazil; (b) Russia; (c) India; (d) China; and (e) South Africa; (f) The trendlines of publications in BRICS countries.

Figure 1. International collaborative publications and citations of BRICS countries over the decade: (a) Brazil; (b) Russia; (c) India; (d) China; and (e) South Africa; (f) The trendlines of publications in BRICS countries.

Figure 1. International collaborative publications and citations of BRICS countries over the decade: (a) Brazil; (b) Russia; (c) India; (d) China; and (e) South Africa; (f) The trendlines of publications in BRICS countries.

Figure 2. Comparison of the proportion of top 10% highly cited papers, FWCI, and citation per publication of BRICS countries in 2012, 2016, and 2021.

Figure 3. International collaboration network with other countries/regions of BRICS countries over the decade.

Figure 3. International collaboration network with other countries/regions of BRICS countries over the decade.

Figure 3. International collaboration network with other countries/regions of BRICS countries over the decade.

Table 1

Direct and indirect educational international programs in BRICS.

Country	Direct Educational International Program	Indirect Educational International Program
Brazil	“More Science and More Development” program in 2017	-
Russia	a special program for the development of Russia’s educational export potential in 2017	Launched the “5–100 project” in 2013
India	establish India as “a superpower with knowledge.” in 2016	Launched Institutes of Eminence (IoE) in 2017
China	National Medium-and Long-term Education Reform and Development Plan for 10 years in 2010	Launched the “Double First-Class University Plan” in 2016
South Africa	“Policy Framework for the Internationalization of Higher Education in South Africa” in 2017	-

Table 2

Comparison of the indicators of international collaborative publications and the overall research indicators in BRICS countries.

Country	Indicator	Publication	Publication Per University	Citation	Citation PerPublication	Top10 Citation (%)	FWCI	Top10 Journal (%)
Brazil (25)	Total	692,545	27,701	8,601,396	12.4	9.724	1.04	20.3
	International collaboration	253,182	10,127	4,729,480	18.7	19.012	1.87	34.5
	Ratio (%)	36.56	36.56	54.99	150.40	195.52	179.59	170.14
Russia (22)	Total	387,713	17,623	3,437,999	8.9	7.5	0.98	14.7
	International collaboration	122,750	5580	2,271,061	18.5	17.4	1.58	31.6
	Ratio (%)	31.6	31.6	66.06	208.65	231.42	161.44	214.95
India (24)	Total	452,330	18,847	4,911,851	10.9	11.3	1.07	19.2
	International collaboration	90,510	3771	1,856,956	20.5	20.9	1.96	30.7
	Ratio (%)	20.01	20.01	37.81	188.94	184.62	182.82	159.62
China (42)	Total	2,908,221	69,243	45,392,436	15.6	16.7	1.20	31.1
	International collaboration	747,950	17,808	19,000,548	25.4	27.0	1.91	47.6
	Ratio (%)	25.72	25.72	41.86	162.7	161.41	158.91	153.36
South Africa (23)	Total	265,658	11,550	4,026,463	15.2	10.1	1.18	17.3
	International collaboration	126,736	5510	3,029,861	23.9	17.0	1.84	25.3
	Ratio (%)	47.71	47.71	75.25	157.73	168.04	155.47	145.90

Table 3

Top 10 subjects with the most prominent international collaboration publications of the BRICS countries over the decade.

Subject	Brazil	Russia	India	China	South Africa
Animal Science and Zoology	5719	-	-	-	-
Astronomy and Astrophysics	-	-	-	-	3184
Atomic and Molecular Physics, and Optics	-	6732	-	-	-
Biochemistry	5465	-	-	-	-
Computer Networks and Communications	-	-	3649	29,087	-
Computer Science Applications	5088	-	4175	44,000	-
Condensed Matter Physics	7021	11,886	6900	38,671	3180
Ecology	-	-	-	-	3331
Ecology, Evolution, Behavior and Systematics	9012	-	-	-	6937
Electrical and Electronic Engineering	6683	6155	7524	69,036	3162
Electronic, Optical and Magnetic Materials	-	9620	4494	28,671	-
General Chemistry	5562	6089	5675	45,813	3221
General Materials Science	5883	8057	6735	54,258	-
General Medicine	-	-	-	-	3488
General Physics and Astronomy	-	10,367	3572	-	-
Infectious Diseases	-	-	-	-	6396
Materials Chemistry	-	-	3929	-	-
Mechanical Engineering	-	-	4420	40,218	-
Mechanics of Materials	-	-	-	27,361	-
Molecular Biology	5333	-	-	-	-
Multidisciplinary	5829	-	-	-	4200
Nuclear and High Energy Physics	-	5253	-	-	-
Physical and Theoretical Chemistry	-	5020	-	-	-
Physics and Astronomy (miscellaneous)	-	4215	-	-	-
Public Health, Environmental and Occupational Health	-	-	-	-	5575
Software	-	-	-	33,216	-

Table 4

International collaboration network with other countries/regions of BRICS countries over the decade: (a) Brazil; (b) Russia; (c) India; (d) China; and (e) South Africa.

Ranking	2012		2016		2021
	Country/Region	Number	Country/Region	Number	Country/Region	Number
1	United States	4032	United States	6159	United States	8966
2	France	1578	United Kingdom	2520	United Kingdom	4119
3	United Kingdom	1510	Spain	2114	Germany	3173
4	Germany	1381	France	2085	Spain	3010
5	Spain	1278	Germany	2045	France	2772
6	Italy	1043	Italy	1662	Italy	2655
7	Portugal	917	Portugal	1537	Canada	2527
8	Canada	906	Canada	1506	Portugal	2430
9	Argentina	666	Australia	1134	Australia	2052
10	Switzerland	656	Netherlands	988	China	1468
(a) Brazil.
Ranking	2012		2016		2021
	Country/Region	Number	Country/Region	Number	Country/Region	Number
1	Germany	1404	United States	2642	Germany	3474
2	United States	1338	Germany	2572	United States	3354
3	France	865	France	1619	China	2342
4	United Kingdom	768	United Kingdom	1448	United Kingdom	2117
5	Spain	633	Italy	1179	Italy	1997
6	Italy	631	China	1076	France	1980
7	China	574	Spain	991	Spain	1214
8	Switzerland	517	Poland	861	India	1140
9	Poland	474	Japan	794	Poland	1077
10	Japan	470	Switzerland	741	Netherlands	953
(b) Russian.
Ranking	2012		2016		2021
	Country/Region	Number	Country/Region	Number	Country/Region	Number
1	United States	1619	United States	2253	United States	3845
2	Germany	634	Germany	898	United Kingdom	2044
3	United Kingdom	626	United Kingdom	881	Saudi Arabia	1943
4	France	493	South Korea	660	China	1577
5	South Korea	467	Saudi Arabia	611	Australia	1324
6	China	349	France	610	Germany	1216
7	Canada	334	China	546	South Korea	1154
8	Australia	312	Australia	483	Italy	856
9	Saudi Arabia	298	Japan	460	Malaysia	829
10	Italy	284	Italy	455	Canada	811
(c) India.
Ranking	2012		2016		2021
	Country/Region	Number	Country/Region	Number	Country/Region	Number
1	United States	15,738	United States	26,375	United States	35,882
2	Hong Kong	3750	United Kingdom	5872	United Kingdom	12,239
3	United Kingdom	3433	Hong Kong	5169	Australia	9687
4	Japan	2930	Australia	4907	Hong Kong	8665
5	Australia	2468	Canada	3944	Germany	6976
6	Germany	2415	Germany	3706	Canada	6694
7	Canada	2315	Japan	3602	Japan	5547
8	France	1599	Singapore	2552	Singapore	4755
9	Singapore	1529	France	2423	France	4086
10	South Korea	1190	Taiwan	1703	Pakistan	3513
(d) China.
Ranking	2012		2016		2021
	Country/Region	Number	Country/Region	Number	Country/Region	Number
1	United States	1954	United States	3178	United States	4745
2	United Kingdom	1500	United Kingdom	2301	United Kingdom	4048
3	Germany	774	Germany	1324	Australia	2053
4	Australia	720	Australia	1286	Germany	1922
5	France	693	Netherlands	1090	Nigeria	1900
6	Netherlands	560	France	1067	India	1554
7	Canada	548	Canada	993	China	1473
8	Italy	441	India	963	Canada	1371
9	Switzerland	435	Italy	777	Netherlands	1338
10	Sweden	423	Switzerland	737	France	1328
(e) South Africa.

Table 5

Top three national universities with the most contributions to international collaboration publications of BRICS countries over the decade.

Country	University	Number	Percentage
Brazil	Universidade de São Paulo	59,165	23.37%
	Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul	46,757	18.47%
	Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro	18,325	7.24%
Russia	Moscow State University	24,991	20.36%
	St Petersburg State University	12,403	10.10%
	Novosibirsk State University	8773	7.15%
India	Indian Institute of Science	8709	9.62%
	Anna University	8707	8.40%
	Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay	7606	7.77%
China	Tsinghua University	50,536	6.76%
	Peking University	49,214	6.58%
	Shanghai Jiaotong University	47,584	6.36%
South Africa	University of Cape Town	23,786	18.77%
	University of the Witwatersrand	17,967	14.18%
	University of KwaZulu-Natal	14,698	11.60%

Table 6

Top 3 international universities with the most contributions to international collaboration publications of the BRICS countries over the decade.

Country	University	Number	Percentage
Brazil	Harvard University	6205	2.45%
	Université Paris-Saclay	4280	1.69%
	University of Lisbon	4258	1.68%
Russia	Université Paris-Saclay	4392	3.58%
	Charles University	3529	2.87%
	University of Bologna	3451	2.81%
India	Université Paris-Saclay	2142	2.37%
	King Saud University	2108	2.33%
	Ohio State University	1957	2.16%
China	Hong Kong Polytechnic University	14,058	1.88%
	Chinese University of Hong Kong	13,060	1.75%
	National University of Singapore	13,007	1.74%
South Africa	Harvard University	4756	3.75%
	University of Oxford	3554	2.80%
	University College London	2865	2.26%

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