The international collaboration is among the areas of strategic priorities for United Arab Emirates University (UAEU). It aims to share the best educational and research practices in a way that supports the UAEU future vision to become a research-intensive university. The UAEU has collaboration activities, through its various colleges and research centers, with 52 universities, centers and governmental educational or research institutions in Saudi Arabia.

Prof. Ahmed Ali Murad, Associate Provost for Research, emphasized that international cooperation and partnerships are essential for enhancing the university international reputation, which contributes to achieving qualitative leaps in the university ranking. Furthermore, the international collaboration allows to benefit from the infrastructure available in these institutions in a way that would enhance our research outputs. The UAEU is working to improve its academic and research collaboration with universities and research centers in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.

This collaboration led to the publication of 628 research papers, according to Scopus database, during 2017-2022, with a total citations of 28,903 citations. This is equivalent to 46 citations for each research, which confirms the quality of research outputs and contributes to strengthening the university's global position.

Moreover, there is a twinning program between the UAE University and King Saud University, where researchers from the two universities published 151 research papers during 2017-2022 with 20,250 citations. Also researchers from the UAE University in collaboration with researchers from Al-Faisal University published approximately 85 research papers during that period, with a total of 19,114 citations.

Research collaborations with Saudi universities and educational institutions focused on medicine, engineering, chemistry, computer science, physics, and astronomy. According to Scopus database, 24% of the joint publications during 2017-2022 were related to medicine. On the other hands, 19%, 11%, 10%, 10% of the publications were related to engineering, chemistry, computer science, physics, and astronomy, respectively.

The UAEU researchers are also collaborating with researchers from King Saud University, King Abdullah University of Science and Technology and King Abdulaziz University in seven projects. The UAEU Emirates Center for Mobility Research and Umm Al-Qura University are collaborating in an externally funded project.