What effects does international mobility have on scientists' careers? A systematic review

The internationalization and specialization of science confront scientists with opportunities and sometimes even a need to become internationally mobile during their careers. Against this background, we systematically reviewed empirical studies on the effects that mobility across national borders has on the careers of scientists. Using several search channels, we identified 96 studies - published between 1994 and 2019 - that examine how international mobility influences eight dimensions of scientists’ careers. Listed in descending order of the number of identified studies, these dimensions comprise scientists’ (1) international networks, (2) scientific productivity, (3) occupational situation, (4) scientific impact, (5) competences and personality, (6) scientific knowledge, (7) access to research infrastructures and funds, and (8) symbolic capital. Existing research provides robust evidence of positive effects of international mobility on the broadening of scientists' networks. Moreover, several solid studies examine the effect of international mobility on scientists’ productivity, impact, and occupational situation. Most of them find positive effects, but some also find no or negative effects. Studies on the other career dimensions are not only less frequent, but mostly also less robust. Our review reveals potential to advance research in the field by using less selective samples and more rigorous methodological approaches. Intending to spur further theory-driven empirical research, we develop a model integrating research on the identified career dimensions and derive various questions for future research. We conclude by highlighting policy implications of existing research

Context Factors and the Performance of Mobile Individuals in Research Teams

This article studies how workforce composition is related to a firm’s success in introducing radical innovations. Pre-vious studies have argued that teams composed of individuals with diverse backgrounds are able to perform moreinformation processing and make deeper use of the information, which is important to accomplish complex tasks.We suggest that this argument can be extended to the level of the aggregate workforce of high-technology firms. Inparticular, we argue that ethnic and higher education diversity within the workforce is associated with superior per-formance in radical innovation. Using a sample of 3,888 Swedish firms, this article demonstrates that having greaterworkforce diversity in terms of both ethnic background and educational disciplinary background is positively corre-lated to the share of a firm’s turnover generated by radical innovation. Having more external collaborations does,however, seem to reduce the importance of educational background diversity. The impact of ethnic diversity is notaffected by external collaboration. These findings hold after using alternative measures of dependent and indepen-dent variables, alternative sample sizes, and alternative estimation techniques. The research findings presented inthis article would seem to have immediate and important practical implications. They would suggest that companiesmay pursue recruitment policies inspired by greater ethnic and disciplinary diversity as a way to boost the innova-tiveness of the organ ization. From a managerial perspective, it may be conc luded tha t workforce disciplinary diver-sity could be potentially replaced by more external links, while ethnic diversity could not

An inquiry into the return mobility of scientific researchers in Europe

[EN] Against the current of scientific researchers moving to universities and research institutes outside their home countries, there is also an observable flow of researchers who relocate back to their home countries following a foreign stay. The aim of this report is to take stock of conceptual and measurement issues related to this phenomenon, referred to as the ¿return mobility¿ of researchers. In the context of European policies striving to promote excellent research while realizing it by efficient spending, there are fears that researcher mobility towards centers of excellence (seen as ¿brain drain¿ in ¿net exporter¿ countries) further widens the gap between regions of Europe. This fear is behind a growing concern for fostering the return mobility of talented researchers to ensure a more equal distribution of research capacity.The authors would like to thank the valuable feedback and suggestion of colleagues from the JRC s unit I1 Modelling, Indicators and Impact Evaluation, especially, to Sara Flisi, well as Richard Deiss and Diana Ognyanova (DG RTD). The preparation of the study benefitted from funding through the INNOVA_Measure 2 (H2020 690804) project.Cañibano, C.; Vértesy, D.; Vezzulli, A. (2017). An inquiry into the return mobility of scientific researchers in Europe. EUR. Scientific and technical research series. 1-66. https://doi.org/10.2760/54633S16

Knowledge Spillover Agents and Regional Development: Spatial Distribution and Mobility of Star Scientists

It is widely recognised that knowledge and highly skilled individuals as “carriers” of knowledge (i.e. knowledge spillover agents) play a key role in impelling the development and growth of cities and regions. In this paper we discuss in a conceptual way the relation between spatial movements of talent and knowledge flows and present empirical results on the geography and mobility patterns of star scientists. Our findings show that these phenomena a highly uneven in nature, benefiting only a few countries which are capable to act as magnet for scientific talent.DYNREG

A cross‑country configurational approach to international academic mobility: exploring mobility effects on academics’ career progression in EU countries

This study takes a novel perspective on mobility as career script compliance to explore the factors that might influence how mobile academics in a country perceive the impact of international mobility on their overall academic career progression and job options. We conduct a country-level qualitative comparative analysis on a sample of 24 European Union (EU) countries, based on data from European Commission’s MORE3 indicator tool. We find that these perceptions about the impact are shaped by the dominant patterns of mobility in that country, and the general perception of academics in that particular country that international mobility is rewarded in the institutional promotion schemes. This study introduces new explanatory factors for the career script for international mobility. In so doing, we provide a richer understanding of how countries might influence academics’ mobility, which sheds light on previous inconclusive empirical evidence linking international mobility and academics’ careers. Our findings have implications for the policy design of international mobility and open up new lines of inquiry for cross-country comparisons.Center for Forestry Research & Experimentation (CIEF) European Commission CIBEST/2021/19

Study on open science: The general state of the play in Open Science principles and practices at European life sciences institutes

Nowadays, open science is a hot topic on all levels and also is one of the priorities of the European Research Area. Components that are commonly associated with open science are open access, open data, open methodology, open source, open peer review, open science policies and citizen science. Open science may a great potential to connect and influence the practices of researchers, funding institutions and the public. In this paper, we evaluate the level of openness based on public surveys at four European life sciences institute