The metropolitan areas act as incubators of new knowledge, and play a central role
in the process of scientific knowledge production. On the basis of highly cited papers
data, this paper adopts spatial scientometrics and social network analysis to investigate
the geography, position and link of science cities between 2007 and 2017. The results
are demonstrated below: (1) The two seemingly paradoxical trends, the regional concentration
and global spread, coexist in the process of knowledge production, which are rapidly
reshaping the global pattern of science. (2) The whole knowledge collaboration network
has been dominated by the Global North cities, while the rise of the Global South
cities has an increasing influence in the network, both driving the evolution of the
world order. (3) The number of scientific collaborations between cities has increased
dramatically, while domestic collaborations have higher strength than international
collaborations. Finally, we discuss the limitations of this study and set out three
directions in the future research agenda of knowledge production.
