SCIENTIFIC COLLABORATION BETWEEN CANADA AND DENMARK

Project - Potential for Canada-Denmark Scientific and Technological Collaboration
Client - International Trade Canada (ITCan)

Description -  This report aims to describe the salient features of the scientific output of Canada and Denmark using bibliometric measurement methods, and identify the fields that show the greatest promise of mutually beneficial collaboration between both countries. The relationship between Canadian and Danish venture capital firms is described, and information on agreements and memoranda of understanding are analyzed based on an intensive search of the Web. Scientific output is measured by extracting and standardizing publications data contained in the Thomson ISI Science Citation Index.

First of all, Canada has a negative trade balance with Denmark and it is therefore important for Canada to promote exports to this country. The report also shows that Canada publishes more papers than Denmark, but has a lower per capita output. Although the output of both countries increased sharply in 2003, average annual growth of Canadian and Danish scientific production is below the world level. Moreover, biology, clinical medicine, biomedical research, and earth & space are the research fields where the strengths of Canada and Denmark coincide. This means that health and life sciences, and earth & space sciences provide great opportunities for collaboration between the two countries.

Besides, scientific collaborations between Canada and Denmark increased between 1998 and 2003, but still did not reach the level of annual growth of Canada's collaborations with the group of Nordic countries. Both Canada and Denmark specialize in almost all subfields of biology and are already working in partnership in most of these subfields. In biomedical research, Canada and Denmark should collaborate in microbiology, and nutrition & dietetics, where both specialize and produce research of high quality. In clinical medicine, Canada and Denmark should continue to collaborate in the area of endocrinology. In the earth & space field, Canada and Denmark are both highly specialized in environmental science, geology, and oceanography & limnology all of which offer good opportunities for collaboration. In addition, Canada and Denmark scientists should collaborate more intensively in several subfields in chemistry, mathematics, engineering & technology and physics fields. The largest number of inter-institutional collaborations is between the Universities of Toronto and Copenhagen.

Finally, recent collaboration between companies and various types of organizations in both Canada and Denmark demonstrate the growing potential for scientific, technological and commercial cooperation. The bilateral Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) covering cooperation in genome research between Canada and Denmark, and the large number of contracts between Canadian energy producers and a major Danish wind turbine manufacturer are examples of this. In the venture capital (VC) market, the level of cross investment between the two countries is low and more should be encouraged. Canadian and Danish VC firms generally invest in the same fields (ICT and life sciences) and these could become the basis for more intensive cross investment.

STUDY REPORT

	Demers-Payette O., Côté G. and Archambault É. 2005.
	Potential for Canada-Denmark Scientific and Technological Collaboration. Prepared for International Trade Canada (ITCan) by Science-Metrix, 35 pages.
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