In this paper, partnership and research collaboration in the construction of knowledge in higher education between academics located in the global North and in the global South as part of internationalization processes in universities is critically examined.

The concept of ‘partnership’ is defined as a ‘relationship in which two or more people, organizations or countries work together as partners’ (Collins dictionary). ‘The term ‘partnership’ contains strong personal connotations and implies a form of social interaction that is supposed to entail a considerable degree of equality, mutual trust, shared vision, and mutual benefit among the different entities involved’ (Obamba and Mwema, 2009:355).

In academia – like in other professional settings -, processes of collaboration and partnership are valued since they make it possible to create new ideas, approaches and strategies in teaching, research and service that would not be possible to do individually. Particularly, academic partnerships allow the creation of new knowledges and strategies to generate those knowledges (Santos, 2013). This is what Knorr Cetina (1999:1) called ‘epistemic cultures’, through which scientists with a common interest in a given field develop what is known and how it is known. Research collaboration, therefore, is a highly valued activity by governments and universities since it allows the production of epistemic, social and economic goods, among others.

However, partnership research collaboration in academia is far from being unproblematic. In an era when drivers promoting international collaboration among academics and their institutions - such as international rankings, internationalization and global policies of cooperation – are paramount (Hazelkorn, 2017; Pusser & Marginson, 2013), partnerships in academia may be risky. They may involve asymmetrical relationships based on power of certain individuals, groups, institutions or countries over others. An imbalance of power a relationship means that one of the parts of the collaboration enterprise dominates the interaction so as to obtain benefit to the detriment of the other part. This is particularly evident when collaboration involves countries and institutions from both industrialised countries (from the global North) and non-industrialised countries (from the global South) in terms of shared goals, financing and roles (Connell, 2007; Santos, 2014).

In particular, international rankings give special weight to indicators such as academic productivity and research income. In this context, obtaining competitive international research grants and publishing in well-regarded journals are paramount to address the demand of becoming international institutions. Additionally, global agencies such as the OECD and the World Bank have been orchestrating a series of initiatives to promote cooperation between industrialised and non-industrialised countries (OECD, 2014; World Bank, 2013). These initiatives have been shaping the type of research collaboration among universities across different regions of the world with a different economic development

In some cases, the establishment of partnerships between countries with well-advanced economies and poor countries, however, have been accepted by the poorest countries and institutions due to financial pressures (King, 2008). As a result, relationships of mutual need and dependency have been promoted.

In this context, the very nature of collaboration among scholars and institutions belonging to regions with different degrees of industrialization, the type of knowledge produced in the light of schemes of collaboration and the value attached to that knowledge deserve more attention and critical examination. In this paper, special attention will be paid to papers in higher education studies published by Latin American academics and their patterns of co-authorship with academics located in the global North.

Papers in higher education indexed in Web of Science (WoS), SCOPUS and the Scientific Electronic Library Online (SciELO) were identified. WoS is a well-recognised database that includes the references of the main scientific publications of any discipline of knowledge. It is composed of its prestigious ‘core collection’ journals in sciences, social sciences, art and humanities and other indexes such as the Emerging Source Citation Index. It is managed by Clarivate Analytics an independent and commercial company with branches in different countries in the Global North. SCOPUS is also well-known index of citations across publications on similar research topics as WoS which are published in journals and conference proceedings. It has more presence in Europe, Asia and Africa although it is present in the USA and Latin America (Aghaei et al., 2013). WoS and SCOPUS are considered to be the most prestigious journals indexes (Vessuri, Guédon & Cetto, 2014: 656). In turn, SciELO is a leading index for emerging economies such as Latin America and Africa that was created in Brazil. In 2013, SciELO was included in the WoS database although it is not part of its ‘core collection’. SciELO works under a non-commercial policy of open access (Fischman, Alperin & Willinsky, 2010). Several searches were conducted in the WoS index core collection, SCOPUS and SciELO using similar keywords and categories. All of them addressed issues of higher education and were written by at least one scholar affiliated to a Latin American university. A total of 130 papers in the WoS core collection, 844 papers in SCOPUS and 1,240 papers in SciELO published between 2000 and 2015 were identified.

a) Papers in higher education studies in Latin America are have been increasing in number over the years. This is particularly evident in journals indexed in SCOPUS and SciELO although papers in WoS have also increased in numbers in the last years. b) International collaboration in publications in higher education studies is rather low. c) International collaboration with colleagues within and outside Latin America is rather low but tends to be higher for WoS papers. d) When publishing in major journals – such as those in the WoS core collection – Latin American scholars prefer to co-publish with academics in the global North. e) In the case of WoS papers with collaboration outside Latin America, most of the first authors are from the global North. While objective indicators can be proposed so as to measure international research collaboration in terms of economic value or academic production, the very process of collaboration involves a clash of worlds with cultural visions, interests, values and knowledges in conflict. Collaboration involves power relationships that put Latin American scholars and universities in a conflicted and risky position which is not always explicit or evident. There is present a global conflict in epistemic value, with different sets of epistemic value operation in the global North and the global South. As a result, there are many geopolitical barriers in research partnership that are imposed upon academics in countries in both the global North and the global South, especially in the social sciences and humanities. It seems productive to envisage new and imaginative ways to put into practice a type of collaboration that takes into account the richness that can be brought in by all parts. The paper will end by offering some ideas to promote new ways to re-shape international partnership in the academia.

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