Does the participation of the diaspora make scientific collaborations different? An investigation on co-authorship with the Brazilian scientific diaspora in COVID-19 research

Studies have pointed out that although international collaboration is fundamental to research, relationships between Global North and South researchers are often asymmetrical. In the last decade, interest has grown in the role of scientific diasporas, especially in promoting more balanced interactions between researchers from the global North and South. However, empirical studies still need to be carried out to explore this hypothesis. The objective of this work was to investigate whether the participation of the scientific diaspora with researchers from their country of origin alters scientific production in terms of inclusion into international research networks, research topics, and the impact of publications. We carried out a comparative bibliometric study based on two samples of articles in international collaboration (with and without collaboration with the Brazilian scientific diaspora). The analysis corpus comprises 60 scientific articles about COVID-19, indexed in the OpenAlex database, between 2020 and 2022. The results showed that the sample of articles with diaspora involved a more significant number of institutions and authors and achieved a more substantial impact.