A standard approach to compare research collaborations between pairs of countries is to look at the citations accrued by all publications with authors from both countries. This approach is often misleading, as aspects only marginally related to the collaboration between the country pairs may bias the result considerably. Among them, the main aspect is the number of co-authors. Publications with many co-authors have on average higher citation impact. If the mix of co-publications between two countries has a high share of such publications, the citation impact will likely be high. Moreover, publications with many co-authors tend to include many countries and are thus only to a limited extent characterising the actual collaboration between the selected pair of countries. The purpose of this study is to develop methods for comparisons of country pairs useful for policy makers, who use SciVal or similar tools. Five methods to compare international collaboration are developed and tested. It is noted that the standard approach for comparisons deviates the most. Fractional methods to calculate the citation impact are recommended, as they allow for the use of citations to all co-publications with a higher weight on the citations to publications in which the country pair dominates. As fractionalisation is laborious to carry out based on SciVal data, a more convenient option is also suggested, which is to use co-publications with maximum 10 co-authors. Elsevier should introduce better methods for comparisons of international collaborations and, until this has been made, help its users understand the limitations of the standard approach featured in SciVal. A by-product of the study is that international co-publications deliver a higher citation impact also when publications with the same number of co-authors are compared.

We developed and used methodology to analyze scientific publications in Scopus relating to vehicle electrification and associated key enabling technologies: batteries, fuel cells and electric machines with power electronics. The global research landscape was mapped, and an analysis of the 16 most active countries was carried out. Vehicle electrification publications are rewarded with a high citation impact, and they include corporate actors to a great extent. China dominates in vehicle electrification research as well as in the enabling technologies, and China’s position is set to become even more dominating. Battery research has grown rapidly with a high citation impact, whereas the volume of research for the other enabling technologies was more constant during 2017–2021. Automakers’ research that has led to scientific publications was specifically studied. Ford Motor Company was the automaker with the highest number of vehicle electrification publications during 2017–2021. A large share of the automakers’ publications was co-authored with academic actors, and such publications were rewarded with a higher citation impact than those without. However, the share of international co-publications among the automakers was meager. It is concluded that the analysis of vehicle electrification publications gives an overview of the rapidly developing field. Moreover, the analysis of automakers’ involvement in such research is one way of obtaining one perspective on their strategies and priorities.

This study of patent applications and scientific publications related to batteries is unique as it includes the volume of as well as qualitative indicators for both types of publications. Using carefully elaborated strategies to identify publications relating to batteries, this study provides data to discuss the critical balance to strike between investments in research and the more innovation-related aspects. The results show that China’s dominance in publication volumes increases and that research with Chinese involvement is highly cited, whereas patent applications are slightly less valued than the world average. Quality-related indicators for Canada and the United States are very high for both scientific publications and patent applications. National differences in the proportions of patent applications and scientific publications are large, with Japan at one end with three patent applications per scientific paper and Canada at the other with almost seven scientific papers per patent application. On an actor level, data for Sweden indicate how the automotive industry started to file many patent applications in the decade starting in 2010. Finally, it is noted that this new approach to study a technological field appears promising as it gives new perspectives of relevance for policy actors and others.