International research collaboration is a crucial determinant of scientific productivity, but it remains an underdeveloped task for governments, universities and research systems. Despite important economic and institutional efforts to promote collaborations, not all researchers establish successful international connections during their academic careers. This lack of international contacts hinders knowledge transfer from a broader perspective, limiting, in a way, the advancement of science. This paper analyses these factors—individual and collective—affecting research collaboration in the international context through a hierarchical multiple regression analysis of a sample of 954 Spanish academic researchers. We found that collective factors such as research team social capital—including structural and cognitive dimensions—and team orientation toward research and team productivity clearly affect international collaboration levels. Furthermore, contrary to our expectations, researchers’ human capital and motivation, and the principal investigator’s knowledge-oriented leadership, exerted only a very weak effect, which also is discussed in the paper’s final section.

国际研究合作是科学生产力的关键决定因素，但对于政府、大学和研究系统来说，它仍然是一项尚未完成的任务。尽管在促进合作方面做出了重要的经济和机构努力，但并非所有研究人员在其学术生涯中都建立了成功的国际联系。缺乏国际联系阻碍了更广泛的知识转移，在某种程度上限制了科学的进步。本文通过对 954 名西班牙学术研究人员的样本进行分层多元回归分析，分析了影响国际背景下研究合作的这些因素（个人和集体）。我们发现，研究团队社会资本（包括结构和认知维度）以及团队对研究的定位和团队生产力等集体因素明显影响国际合作水平。此外，与我们的预期相反，研究人员的人力资本和动机以及主要研究者的知识导向型领导力只发挥了非常微弱的作用，这也在本文的最后部分进行了讨论。