  Research articles produced through international collaboration are more
highly cited than other work, but are they also more novel? Using measures
developed by Uzzi et al. (2013), and replicated by Boyack and Klavans (2014),
this article tests for novelty and conventionality in international research
collaboration. Scholars have found that coauthored articles are more novel and
have suggested that diverse groups have a greater chance of producing creative
work. As such, we expected to find that international collaboration tends to
produce more novel research. Using data from Web of Science and Scopus in 2005,
we failed to show that international collaboration tends to produce more novel
articles. In fact, international collaboration appears to produce less novel
and more conventional knowledge combinations. Transaction costs and
communication barriers to international collaboration may suppress novelty.
Higher citations to international work may be explained by an audience effect,
where more authors from more countries results in greater access to a larger
citing community. The findings are consistent with explanations of growth in
international collaboration that posit a social dynamic of preferential
attachment based upon reputation.
