Abstract: 【Purpose/significance】This paper explores the preference.inequality and spatial agglomeration pattern of scientific research collaboration among countries to provide theoretical basis for promoting scientific research collaboration among countries【. Method/pro⁃cess】Based on the co-authored publications in the field of scientometrics in WoS from 1978 to 2018.the collaboration preference is re⁃flected by the collaboration intensity and the similarity of collaboration intensity.and the collaboration inequality measurement index is proposed according to Gini coefficient.Meanwhile.with the help of global and local spatial autocorrelation theory.the spatial agglomera⁃tion pattern of collaboration is analyzed【. Result/conclusion】Scientific research in the field of scientometrics has a strong concentra⁃
tion trend; the inequality of collaboration decreases with the increase of collaboration frequency.and the higher the collaboration fre⁃quency the status of collaboration is becoming more and more equal; both the intensity and breadth of global collaboration are signifi⁃cantly positively correlated. There are two high-high agglomeration areas for scientific research collaboration in Europe and North America.several low-low agglomeration areas in Africa.and many low-high or high-low heterogeneous agglomeration areas in Asia.【Innovation/limitation】Compared with geographical distance.this paper further explores the spatial correlation of scientific research collaborations.In the follow-up research.the temporal dimension will be added to analyze the spatial-temporal evolution characteris⁃ tics of scientific research collaborations.