IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/infome/v16y2022i2s1751157722000323.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The many facets of academic mobility and its impact on scholars' career

Author

Listed:
  • Momeni, Fakhri
  • Karimi, Fariba
  • Mayr, Philipp
  • Peters, Isabella
  • Dietze, Stefan

Abstract

International mobility in academia can enhance the human and social capital of researchers and consequently their scientific outcome. However, there is still a very limited understanding of the different mobility patterns among scholars with various socio-demographic characteristics. By studying these differences, we can detect inequalities in access to scholarly networks across borders, which can cause disparities in scientific advancement. The aim of this study is twofold. First, we investigate to what extent individuals’ factors (e.g., country, career stage, and field of research) associate with the mobility of male and female researchers. Second, we explore the relationship between mobility and scientific activity and impact. For this purpose, we used a bibliometric approach to track the mobility of authors. To compare the researchers’ scientific outcomes, we considered the number of publications and received citations as indicators, as well as the number of unique co-authors in all their publications. We also analyzed the co-authorship network of researchers and compared centrality measures of “mobile” and “non-mobile” researchers. Results show that researchers from North America and Sub-Saharan Africa, particularly female ones, have the lowest, respectively, highest tendency towards international mobility. Having international co-authors increases the probability of international movement. Our findings uncover gender inequality in international mobility across scientific fields and countries. Across genders, researchers in the Physical sciences have the most and in the Social sciences the least rate of mobility. We observed more mobility for Social scientists at the advanced career stage, while researchers in other fields prefer to move at earlier career stages. Also, we found a positive correlation between mobility and scientific outcomes, but no apparent difference between females and males. Indeed, researchers who have started mobility at the advanced career stages had a better scientific outcome. Comparing the centrality of mobile and non-mobile researchers in the co-authorship networks reveals a higher social capital advantage for mobile researchers.

Suggested Citation

  • Momeni, Fakhri & Karimi, Fariba & Mayr, Philipp & Peters, Isabella & Dietze, Stefan, 2022. "The many facets of academic mobility and its impact on scholars' career," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 16(2).
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:infome:v:16:y:2022:i:2:s1751157722000323
    DOI: 10.1016/j.joi.2022.101280
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1751157722000323
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.joi.2022.101280?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Alina Toader & Janine Dahinden, 2018. "Family configurations and arrangements in the transnational mobility of early-career academics: Does gender make twice the difference?," Migration Letters, Migration Letters, vol. 15(1), pages 67-84, January.
    2. Hirotaka Kawashima & Hiroyuki Tomizawa, 2015. "Accuracy evaluation of Scopus Author ID based on the largest funding database in Japan," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 103(3), pages 1061-1071, June.
    3. Valeria Aman, 2018. "Does the Scopus author ID suffice to track scientific international mobility? A case study based on Leibniz laureates," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 117(2), pages 705-720, November.
    4. Marine Bernard & Bastien Bernela & Marie Ferru, 2021. "Does the geographical mobility of scientists shape their collaboration network? A panel approach of chemists’ careers," Papers in Regional Science, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 100(1), pages 79-99, February.
    5. Alexander Subbotin & Samin Aref, 2020. "Brain drain and brain gain in Russia: analyzing international mobility of researchers by discipline using Scopus bibliometric data 1996-2020," MPIDR Working Papers WP-2020-025, Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research, Rostock, Germany.
    6. Seema Jayachandran, 2015. "The Roots of Gender Inequality in Developing Countries," Annual Review of Economics, Annual Reviews, vol. 7(1), pages 63-88, August.
    7. Zaida Chinchilla-Rodríguez & Yi Bu & Nicolás Robinson-García & Rodrigo Costas & Cassidy R. Sugimoto, 2018. "Travel bans and scientific mobility: utility of asymmetry and affinity indexes to inform science policy," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 116(1), pages 569-590, July.
    8. Rosalind S. Hunter & Andrew J. Oswald & Bruce G. Charlton, 2009. "The Elite Brain Drain," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 119(538), pages 231-251, June.
    9. Henk F. Moed & M’hamed Aisati & Andrew Plume, 2013. "Studying scientific migration in Scopus," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 94(3), pages 929-942, March.
    10. Luis Ponjuan & Valerie Martin Conley & Cathy Trower, 2011. "Career Stage Differences in Pre-Tenure Track Faculty Perceptions of Professional and Personal Relationships with Colleagues," The Journal of Higher Education, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 82(3), pages 319-346, May.
    11. Scott Cohen & Paul Hanna & James Higham & Debbie Hopkins & Caroline Orchiston, 2020. "Gender discourses in academic mobility," Gender, Work and Organization, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 27(2), pages 149-165, March.
    12. Alireza Abbasi & Liaquat Hossain & Shahadat Uddin & Kim J. R. Rasmussen, 2011. "Evolutionary dynamics of scientific collaboration networks: multi-levels and cross-time analysis," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 89(2), pages 687-710, November.
    13. Laudel, Grit & Bielick, Jana, 2019. "How do field-specific research practices affect mobility decisions of early career researchers?," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 48(9), pages 1-1.
    14. Valeria Aman, 2018. "A new bibliometric approach to measure knowledge transfer of internationally mobile scientists," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 117(1), pages 227-247, October.
    15. Alexander Subbotin & Samin Aref, 2021. "Brain drain and brain gain in Russia: Analyzing international migration of researchers by discipline using Scopus bibliometric data 1996–2020," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 126(9), pages 7875-7900, September.
    16. Bozeman, Barry & Gaughan, Monica, 2011. "How do men and women differ in research collaborations? An analysis of the collaborative motives and strategies of academic researchers," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 40(10), pages 1393-1402.
    17. Li, Eldon Y. & Liao, Chien Hsiang & Yen, Hsiuju Rebecca, 2013. "Co-authorship networks and research impact: A social capital perspective," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 42(9), pages 1515-1530.
    18. Feng Li & Li Tang, 2019. "When international mobility meets local connections: Evidence from China," Science and Public Policy, Oxford University Press, vol. 46(4), pages 518-529.
    19. Robinson-Garcia, Nicolás & Sugimoto, Cassidy R. & Murray, Dakota & Yegros-Yegros, Alfredo & Larivière, Vincent & Costas, Rodrigo, 2019. "The many faces of mobility: Using bibliometric data to measure the movement of scientists," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 13(1), pages 50-63.
    20. Rosalind S Hunter, 2009. "The Elite Brain Drain," Working Papers id:2048, eSocialSciences.
    21. Carolina Cañibano & F. Javier Otamendi & Francisco Solís, 2011. "International temporary mobility of researchers: a cross-discipline study," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 89(2), pages 653-675, November.
    22. Yves Gingras & Vincent Larivière & Benoît Macaluso & Jean-Pierre Robitaille, 2008. "The Effects of Aging on Researchers' Publication and Citation Patterns," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 3(12), pages 1-8, December.
    23. Carolina Cañibano & Javier Otamendi & Inés Andújar, 2008. "Measuring and assessing researcher mobility from CV analysis: the case of the Ramón y Cajal programme in Spain," Research Evaluation, Oxford University Press, vol. 17(1), pages 17-31, March.
    24. Mohsen Jadidi & Fariba Karimi & Haiko Lietz & Claudia Wagner, 2018. "Gender Disparities In Science? Dropout, Productivity, Collaborations And Success Of Male And Female Computer Scientists," Advances in Complex Systems (ACS), World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd., vol. 21(03n04), pages 1-23, May.
    25. Weihua Li & Tomaso Aste & Fabio Caccioli & Giacomo Livan, 2019. "Early coauthorship with top scientists predicts success in academic careers," Nature Communications, Nature, vol. 10(1), pages 1-9, December.
    26. Luca De Benedictis & Silvia Leoni, 2020. "Gender bias in the Erasmus students network," Papers 2003.09167, arXiv.org.
    27. Zhao, Zhenyue & Bu, Yi & Kang, Lele & Min, Chao & Bian, Yiyang & Tang, Li & Li, Jiang, 2020. "An investigation of the relationship between scientists’ mobility to/from China and their research performance," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 14(2).
    28. Khalilzadeh, Jalayer & Tasci, Asli D.A., 2017. "Large sample size, significance level, and the effect size: Solutions to perils of using big data for academic research," Tourism Management, Elsevier, vol. 62(C), pages 89-96.
    29. Mingfeng Lin & Henry C. Lucas & Galit Shmueli, 2013. "Research Commentary ---Too Big to Fail: Large Samples and the p -Value Problem," Information Systems Research, INFORMS, vol. 24(4), pages 906-917, December.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Yitong Chen & Keye Wu & Yue Li & Jianjun Sun, 2023. "Impacts of inter-institutional mobility on scientific performance from research capital and social capital perspectives," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 128(6), pages 3473-3506, June.
    2. He, Chaocheng & Liu, Fuzhen & Dong, Ke & Wu, Jiang & Zhang, Qingpeng, 2023. "Research on the formation mechanism of research leadership relations: An exponential random graph model analysis approach," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 17(2).
    3. Cheng Peng & Zhepeng (Lionel) Li & Chaojiang Wu, 2023. "Researcher geographic mobility and publication productivity: an investigation into individual and institutional characteristics and the roles of academicians," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 128(1), pages 379-406, January.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Asli Ebru Şanlitürk & Samin Aref & Emilio Zagheni & Francesco C. Billari, 2022. "Homecoming after Brexit: evidence on academic migration from bibliometric data," MPIDR Working Papers WP-2022-019, Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research, Rostock, Germany.
    2. Xinyi Zhao & Samin Aref & Emilio Zagheni & Guy Stecklov, 2022. "Return migration of German-affiliated researchers: analyzing departure and return by gender, cohort, and discipline using Scopus bibliometric data 1996–2020," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 127(12), pages 7707-7729, December.
    3. Vadim N. Gureyev & Nikolay A. Mazov & Denis V. Kosyakov & Andrey E. Guskov, 2020. "Review and analysis of publications on scientific mobility: assessment of influence, motivation, and trends," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 124(2), pages 1599-1630, August.
    4. Gomez, Charles J. & Herman, Andrew C. & Parigi, Paolo, 2020. "Moving more, but closer: Mapping the growing regionalization of global scientific mobility using ORCID," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 14(3).
    5. Liu, Meijun & Hu, Xiao, 2022. "Movers’ advantages: The effect of mobility on scientists’ productivity and collaboration," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 16(3).
    6. Chang, Ying-Han & Huang, Mu-Hsuan, 2023. "Analysis of factors affecting scientific migration move and distance by academic age, migrant type, and country: Migrant researchers in the field of business and management," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 17(1).
    7. Cheng Peng & Zhepeng (Lionel) Li & Chaojiang Wu, 2023. "Researcher geographic mobility and publication productivity: an investigation into individual and institutional characteristics and the roles of academicians," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 128(1), pages 379-406, January.
    8. Valeria Aman, 2022. "Internationally mobile scientists as knowledge transmitters: A lexical‐based approach to detect knowledge transfer," Journal of the Association for Information Science & Technology, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 73(10), pages 1418-1431, October.
    9. Robinson-Garcia, Nicolás & Sugimoto, Cassidy R. & Murray, Dakota & Yegros-Yegros, Alfredo & Larivière, Vincent & Costas, Rodrigo, 2019. "The many faces of mobility: Using bibliometric data to measure the movement of scientists," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 13(1), pages 50-63.
    10. Constance Poitras & Vincent Larivière, 2023. "Research mobility to the United States: a bibliometric analysis," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 128(4), pages 2601-2614, April.
    11. Ciriaco Andrea D’Angelo & Nees Jan Eck, 2020. "Collecting large-scale publication data at the level of individual researchers: a practical proposal for author name disambiguation," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 123(2), pages 883-907, May.
    12. Marine Bernard & Bastien Bernela & Marie Ferru, 2021. "Does the geographical mobility of scientists shape their collaboration network? A panel approach of chemists’ careers," Papers in Regional Science, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 100(1), pages 79-99, February.
    13. Liu, Meijun & Hu, Xiao, 2021. "Will collaborators make scientists move? A Generalized Propensity Score analysis," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 15(1).
    14. Zhang, Lin & Qi, Fan & Sivertsen, Gunnar & Liang, Liming & Campbell, David, 2023. "Gender differences in the patterns and consequences of changing specialization in scientific careers," SocArXiv ep5bx, Center for Open Science.
    15. Shen, Hongquan & Cheng, Ying & Ju, Xiufang & Xie, Juan, 2022. "Rethinking the effect of inter-gender collaboration on research performance for scholars," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 16(4).
    16. Aliakbar Akbaritabar & Tom Theile & Emilio Zagheni, 2023. "Global flows and rates of international migration of scholars," MPIDR Working Papers WP-2023-018, Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research, Rostock, Germany.
    17. Fernandez-Zubieta, Ana & Geuna, Aldo & Lawson, Cornelia, 2015. "What do We Know of the Mobility of Research Scientists and of its Impact on Scientific Production," Department of Economics and Statistics Cognetti de Martiis. Working Papers 201522, University of Turin.
    18. Jeppe Nicolaisen & Tove Faber Frandsen, 2022. "Epistemic community formation: a bibliometric study of recurring authors in medical journals," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 127(7), pages 4167-4189, July.
    19. Xie, Qing & Zhang, Xinyuan & Kim, Giyeong & Song, Min, 2022. "Exploring the influence of coauthorship with top scientists on researchers’ affiliation, research topic, productivity, and impact," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 16(3).
    20. Alexander Subbotin & Samin Aref, 2021. "Brain drain and brain gain in Russia: Analyzing international migration of researchers by discipline using Scopus bibliometric data 1996–2020," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 126(9), pages 7875-7900, September.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:infome:v:16:y:2022:i:2:s1751157722000323. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/joi .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.