International Publication Trends and Collaboration Impact on the Scientific Research of Saudi Arabia

International collaborations are assumed to have a positive effect on scientific research advancement, which ultimately affects the economic growth of developing countries. To examine this effect, international collaborations in Saudi Arabia during the last two decades are investigated. Bibliometric and statistical analyses were applied to identify the characteristics of research collaboration using data extracted from Microsoft Academic Graph (MAG) between 2001 and 2020. After removing records with incomplete information, 158,860 publications were considered in the statistical analysis. The study showed that 64.74% of Saudi Arabia’s scientific output involved international collaborations. Among the different collaboration countries, the United States and Egypt accounted for the highest numbers of collaborations. Over time, the ratio of international collaborations to domestic collaborations continued to increase, indicating the general interest of researchers in Saudi Arabia in international collaborations. The average growth rate of Saudi Arabia’s scientific publications was 17.16% annually, and this growth was attributed more to international collaborations than domestic collaborations. Notably, co-authored publications with international first authors achieve a higher rate of citations than publications with domestic first authors. The analyzed dataset revealed that most scientific publications from Saudi Arabia were owed to international collaborations which have had a constructive effect on the quality of research and perceptibility of Saudi Arabia in the scientific community.