Abstract
This article is an attempt to analyze the scientific production behaviors of private firms in the pharmaceutical industry through the use of coauthorship data, predominantly internationally co-authored scientific publications. We measure the degree of international activity of a few pharmaceutical corporations and describe the basic research network formed between these companies and other scientific entitles, public and private, in industrialized countries. The field of recombinant protein production is taken as an example of a specific form of leading research for further analysis of company behaviors. The analysis should demonstrate the state of art of a few private firms in research development and the role of international research in knowledge production. It should reveal the usefulness of the coauthorship indicator for understanding the mechanisms of scientific knowledge production in private corporations, as well as provide information about corporate strategies to supplement that obtained through analyses of patent data.
