Measuring the Internationalization of Italian Universities using a Network Approach based on Co-Authorship: A Preliminary Analysis

Higher Education in Italy in the new century faces different pressures resulting in increased demanding of high performance and internationalization. This paper evaluates connections across universities with a novel approach. A measure of internationalization for a sample of Italian Universities is established by considering how many collaborations scholars have with other institutions. In addition, the ratio between total number of co-authorship and students is analyzed. Centrality indexes and patterns in different geographical areas are provided to enrich the analysis and the discussion.