Impact of teacher education abroad in international co-authorship: a study of Federal University of São Carlos’s scientifics production indexed in the Web of Science

Abstract Metric studies on internationalization, especially indicators of co-authorship, present challenges regarding the collection, representativeness, and reliability of the data measuring the impacts of international mobility. Aiming to contribute to the understanding of scientific collaboration initiatives, the present research’s objective was to investigate the relationship between outside teacher education, represented by the completion of a doctoral degree and post-doctoral internship, and international collaboration, identified by the international co-authorships in institutional scientific output. The research method was the exploratory case study, and the case unit was the Federal University of São Carlos. The Lattes Platform and the Web of Science were used as sources of information, and the sample analyzed comprised 12,787 scientific articles and 1,915 Lattes resumés. It was found that 1,850 teachers have doctoral or post-doctoral education (96.6%) and, of these, 632 graduated abroad (33.1%). Regarding the scientific output, 3,487 of the 12,787 articles were published in international co-authorship (27.3%). From the scientific output in international co-authorship, indicators on the groups of teachers with and without education abroad were analyzed. Among the indicators developed, 8.43 articles per teacher were identified for the group with education abroad, while in the group without education abroad, 4.26 articles were identified per teacher. The results demonstrate a positive relationship between doctoral or post-doctoral education abroad with international co-authorships, contributing to institutional internationalization.