Are Scholarly Articles Disproportionately Read In Their Own Country? An Analysis Of Mendeley Readers

International collaboration tends to result in more highly cited research and, partly as a result of this, many research funding schemes are specifically international in scope. Nevertheless, it is not clear whether this citation advantage is the result of higher quality research or due to other factors, such as a larger audience for the publications. To test whether the apparent advantage of internationally collaborative research may be due to additional interest in articles from the countries of the authors, this article assesses the extent to which the national affiliations of the authors of articles affect the national affiliations of their Mendeley readers. Based on English-language Web of Science articles in 10 fields from science, medicine, social science, and the humanities, the results of statistical models comparing author and reader affiliations suggest that, in most fields, Mendeley users are disproportionately readers of articles authored from within their own country. In addition, there are several cases in which Mendeley users from certain countries tend to ignore articles from specific other countries, although it is not clear whether this reflects national biases or different national specialisms within a field. In conclusion, research funders should not incentivize international collaboration on the basis that it is, in general, higher quality because its higher impact may be primarily due to its larger audience. Moreover, authors should guard against national biases in their reading to select only the best and most relevant publications to inform their research.