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Abstract This study aims to identify the scope and intensity of international collaboration in research conducted by multinational firms in the pharmaceutical sector, and to investigate the key factors that determine the impact of scientific publications before and after the COVID-19 pandemic. We focus on two large multinational enterprises (MNEs) that were inventors of vaccines against the COVID-19 virus, namely the British-Swedish company AstraZeneca and the American company Pfizer. We analyze both their bilateral Research and Development (R&D) collaboration and their R&D connections with other entities, such as universities and other MNEs. Using bibliometric methods, a sample of 392 peer-reviewed scientific articles published jointly by authors affiliated with AstraZeneca and Pfizer was selected from the Scopus database and used as a proxy for their joint collaborative R&D efforts. We show that research collaboration between competing multinationals in the pharmaceutical sector intensified during the COVID-19 pandemic, and their relations with respect to R&D evolved towards “coopetition,” balancing competitive and cooperative strategies. The citation analysis of these joint papers identifies the most influential papers. Based on regression models estimating the impact of joint research measured by the number of citations in the pre- and post-pandemic periods, we found that a stronger impact is associated with the affiliation type of the lead author (academic institution), the affiliation country of the lead author (primarily the United States), and the article type (review article). Following the pandemic, having an American first author was linked to increased citations, while a greater concentration of country-level affiliation had a negative effect, highlighting both the United States’ research dominance as new researchers entered the field and the growing importance of diverse networks. These findings contribute to understanding how extreme events reshape R&D cooperation and knowledge flows, offering implications for innovation management and policy.
Weresa et al. (Wed,) studied this question.