  Policy makers, at various levels of governance, generally encourage the
development of research collaboration. However the underlying determinants of
collaboration are not completely clear. In particular, the literature lacks
studies that, taking the individual researcher as the unit of analysis, attempt
to understand if and to what extent the researcher's scientific performance
might impact on his/her degree of collaboration with foreign colleagues. The
current work examines the international collaborations of Italian university
researchers for the period 2001-2005, and puts them in relation to each
individual's research performance. The results of the investigation, which
assumes co-authorship as proxy of research collaboration, show that both
research productivity and average quality of output have positive effects on
the degree of international collaboration achieved by a scientist.
