This paper investigates Vietnam’s scientific publications between 1996 and 2013 from Scopus database, focusing on international collaboration. The total scientific output of the country increased about 16 publications per year during 1996–2001 and quickly increased 20 % per year during 2002–2013. However, the share of international collaboration was about 77 % of the total output. Biological and agricultural science, medicine dominated the total output, but 80–90 % of these publications are from international collaboration. In contrast, mathematics is the only field that domestic output is larger than collaboration output. Japan is the largest collaborating country, followed by United States, France, South Korea and United Kingdom. Analyzing titles of publications with these collaborating countries, we found high frequency of “Vietnam” or “Vietnamese” words. This result suggested that many study subjects of these research collaborations were from Vietnam. Furthermore, corresponding authors of these research collaborations are mainly from collaborating countries, which suggested that these research collaborations mainly led by foreign authors. Although the total output was quickly increased, especially collaboration output, Vietnamese researchers should be aware about their low contribution to these collaborations.