RSAI has the great pleasure to announce that the jury consisting of  Janice Madden, Carlos Azzoni and Erik Verhoef chose the article "Network proximity in the geography of research collaboration" by Laurent R. Bergé,  published in Volume 94, Issue 4, Vovember 2017, Pages: 785-815 as the winner of the Martin Beckmann Prize as the best paper published in Papers in Regional Science in 2017.

Motivation:

Through an elegant scientific approach, the paper replies to the questions of how network proximity influences the structure of inter-regional collaborations and how it interacts with geography. A new, theoretically grounded, measure of inter-regional network proximity is introduced.

The paper achieves interesting results, revealing that inter-regional network proximity is important in determining future collaborations but its effect is mediated by geography. Most importantly, a clear substitution pattern is revealed showing that network proximity mainly benefits international collaborations.

Based on the originality of the interest in the topic, and the important results achieved, the jury concluded that the paper was the best published one in 2017.

Many congratulations to Laurent R. Bergé!