An investigation of country-scale collaboration patterns of digital humanities through dual perspectives of bibliometrics and altmetrics

Purpose National collaboration is an important topic for the development of digital humanities (DH). However, the collaboration patterns of DH have not been well studied in terms of development stages and collaboration characteristics. This paper aims to reveal the typical patterns of country-level collaboration in the global environment of DH based on research capacity, network features and influence indicators. Design/methodology/approach We systematically designed a pipeline procedure based on the methods of bibliometrics and altmetrics to analyze global DH-related publications from two popular databases. The process includes the division of development stages, the identification of typical characteristics, the analysis of collaboration networks and the correlation test for different influences across countries. Findings The findings show that the collaboration in DH has certain characteristics and evolutionary patterns – with 2007 as the turning point that presents a gradual alteration from the strong competition of nation giants and the dominance of domestic collaboration to diversified international cooperation within regional alliances and a clear positive effect on national influence (both academic and social levels) by international collaboration. Some relevant suggestions are also put forward. Originality/value The study demonstrates not only the evidence of distinct patterns of country-level collaboration for DH during its evolutionary period as well as collaboration types and structures but also the positive effect of international collaboration on the enhancement of both academic influence and social attention. Moreover, the proposed analytical procedure provides insightful ideas around DH development from both the bibliometric and altmetric views, which can be an extensible framework for other scholarly collaboration research.