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

Are the strategic research agendas of researchers in the social sciences determinants of research productivity?

This study analyzes the association between the strategic research agendas of researchers in the social sciences and their research performance. Based on a worldwide sample of 604 researchers, this study assesses whether researchers’ strategic research agendas are predictors of both short-term (last 3 years) and long-term career publications and citations, after controlling for relevant literature-informed determinants of research productivity. The results show that, in a short-term perspective, research agendas have a limited association with productivity and visibility. Solely the research agendas strategically oriented towards publishing and those collaborative in nature have positive associations with research productivity and visibility. This changes when a long-term perspective is considered. Over the course of a career, research agendas are significantly associated with number of publications and citations. Research agendas oriented towards publishing and collaboration, and those focused on a single field of knowledge, prestige gain and discovery have a positive effect on career research performance, while those research agendas that are overspecialized, dispersed over several fields of knowledge and topics, and influenced by a mentor have opposite associations. This study also finds that prolific research productivity shapes one’s strategic research agenda: the more one publishes, the more one is bound to have a strategic research agenda that is focused on prestige, discovery, a further drive to publish, engagement in a multitude of topics to research, and pursuing multidisciplinary and collaborative research. This effect is driven by an accumulation of publications, not citations. These findings highlight how strategic research choices interact with the individual performance of researchers in the social sciences in performativity-oriented research landscapes.info:eu-repo/semantics/acceptedVersio

Investigating the contribution of author- and publication-specific features to scholars' h-index prediction

Evaluation of researchers' output is vital for hiring committees and funding bodies, and it is usually measured via their scientific productivity, citations, or a combined metric such as h-index. Assessing young researchers is more critical because it takes a while to get citations and increment of h-index. Hence, predicting the h-index can help to discover the researchers' scientific impact. In addition, identifying the influential factors to predict the scientific impact is helpful for researchers seeking solutions to improve it. This study investigates the effect of author, paper and venue-specific features on the future h-index. For this purpose, we used machine learning methods to predict the h-index and feature analysis techniques to advance the understanding of feature impact. Utilizing the bibliometric data in Scopus, we defined and extracted two main groups of features. The first relates to prior scientific impact, and we name it 'prior impact-based features' and includes the number of publications, received citations, and h-index. The second group is 'non-impact-based features' and contains the features related to author, co-authorship, paper, and venue characteristics. We explored their importance in predicting h-index for researchers in three different career phases. Also, we examine the temporal dimension of predicting performance for different feature categories to find out which features are more reliable for long- and short-term prediction. We referred to the gender of the authors to examine the role of this author's characteristics in the prediction task. Our findings showed that gender has a very slight effect in predicting the h-index. We found that non-impact-based features are more robust predictors for younger scholars than seniors in the short term. Also, prior impact-based features lose their power to predict more than other features in the long-term.Comment: 14 pages, 1 figur

Chinese "Sea-Turtles" and Importing a Culture of Innovation: Trends in Chinese Human Capital Migration in the 21st Century

This thesis explores efforts in China to create an indigenous culture of innovation aimed at freeing China’s economy from dependence on foreign sources of capital and technology while propelling China to the top tier of global industrial powers. Beginning with the historical, cultural and political traditions that led to the establishment of China as an imitator rather than creative inventor in areas of science and technology, the study moves to research recent policy efforts in China to stimulate indigenous innovation through educational reforms and various forms of financial and immigration incentives. The human resource engineering effort to encourage Chinese students (“sea turtles”) to study in the West and then return home to engage in entrepreneurial activity is one element of the Chinese government’s “Long Term Plan” to stimulate innovative capacity, creative research and development, and economic growth. Using current literature on innovation, this study draws on a framework illustrating the ways that the innovation process helps a product move from a creative idea to market-based reality, and analyzes patent filings and research citations to illustrate a shift in ownership of intellectual property in China from foreigners, to “sea turtle” Returnees, to locals. This study concludes with a large body of original survey data on Chinese students in North Carolina’s Research Triangle Park and in Shanghai, examining different motives for leaving and staying in China, as well as reactions to new government incentives to entice people back. What emerges is a surprising twist on the idea of “the brain drain.” More than sixty percent of China’s wealthiest individuals—themselves sea turtles—are in the process of emigrating from China to Canada, the US, and other countries. In an examination of some high-profile entrepreneurs this study points to a lack of confidence in genuine government reform and a deep concern with corruption on many levels as reasons why, despite the best laid plans, successful sea turtles are using their international connections to exit their country of birth.honors thesis 2013, winner of Distinguished Thesis award in International Comparative Studie

Return mobility of scientists and knowledge circulation : an exploratory approach to scientists attitudes and perspectives

The paper addresses the international mobility and return of scientists and its implications for regions/countries with weaker scientific and technological systems. It focuses on the “return dilemma” and, using the Portuguese case as empirical setting, discusses the conditions for return, the “diaspora” alternative and the role of policies in minimising the impacts of mobility flows. Despite the growing importance assumed by scientific mobility, our understanding of mobility flows, in particular of return mobility, is still deficient. Data about the level of mobility and mobility paths is scarce and difficult to obtain and the knowledge about expatriate scientists’ motivations and strategies, namely their attitudes towards the home country and their perspectives concerning career and return mobility, remains limited. The research presented in this paper is a preliminary contribution to attend to some of these issues. A method is proposed to address some methodological problems in empirical research on scientific mobility. It permits to delimit a sample of “scientifically productive” expatriate scientists in specific fields, to locate these scientists and to trace their professional trajectories, thus making possible to collect information on their mobility behaviour as well as to gain some preliminary insights on their attitudes and perspectives. This methodology is experimentally applied to the Portuguese case. Notwithstanding its exploratory nature, the empirical research provides some insights into the behaviour of a younger generation of “scientifically productive scientists” in a field with a strong international mobility pattern (biotechnology), which can be relevant for policy makin

Beyond the PhD: the significance of boundaries in the early careers of highly qualified Greek scientists and engineers

Higher education and research have come to the forefront of international debate about economic growth highlighting the significance of doctoral education for fostering innovation and international competitiveness. Currently, there is limited information about doctoral graduates in Greece from both a demand and supply side. This study seeks to address this gap by examining the early career paths of Greek doctoral graduates in natural sciences and engineering educated in Greece and the UK, and how they are deployed in the labour market. This study is informed by the debate on human capital and its links to productivity and growth, social capital influences, career theories and the existing evidence on highly skilled migration. A mixed methods approach was adopted to deliver new quantitative and qualitative data and enable the understanding of complex phenomena, such as careers. An online survey of Greek PhD graduates was complemented by followup interviews with a sub-sample, to explore their perceptions of doctoral education and its outcomes. The career trajectories of Greek doctorate holders, together with individual and contextual determinants that shape career choices are presented. Within this investigation, the effect of country of doctoral study, and doctoral education experience are also explored. Emphasis is given to disciplinary labour markets in relation to engineering and biological sciences and the academic system in Greece as contextual considerations that influence career choices. This information is extended by a small number of interviews with Greek based non-academic employers, contributing to a better understanding of their views, informing both the PhD graduates and employers’ (mis)perceptions regarding doctoral education and its value beyond academia. Overall, it will be concluded that Greek PhD graduates are under-utilised in the Greek labour market raising concerns about educational investment and potential brain drain under the current economic crisis in Greece

Early career development in Chinese banking : the impact of overseas education on graduate experiences

Considering the crucial role played by state-owned enterprises (SOEs) and multinational corporations (MNCs) in China’s economic reform, and the growing number and importance of Chinese overseas educated graduates, this thesis explores the early career-development of returnee graduates. The research draws on theoretical perspectives relating to human, social and cultural capital, along with theories of motivation, adaptation and job satisfaction in the course of career development, applied in the Chinese context. Two qualitative case studies were carried out in the banking sector: one in an SOE and the other in an MNC. This involved interviewing returnees, local graduates and managers on their perceptions of the integration of returnees into the organisations. At the individual level, it considered the value of overseas education and the capital possessed by returnees, observing how human capital was produced through graduates’ early stages of career development, and how this contributed to their place of work. At the organisational level, by making use the perceptions of HR managers as well as self-evaluation from returnees, the advantages and disadvantages of returnees were explored, together with their actual utilisation, the rationales behind the HR strategies adopted by the two organisations. This led to an understanding of how the integration of returnees is affected by different social and corporate settings

Mobility and research performance of academics in city-based higher education systems

This study assesses how four types of mobility, which are analysed simultaneously, are associated with the current research output quality and visibility of academics working in the city-based higher education systems of Hong Kong and Macau. Transnational educational mobility is associated with the academics’ educational path, whilst intrasectoral job mobility, intersectoral job mobility and transnational job mobility are related to their professional careers. The research output, quality and visibility of academics are based on three indicators pertaining to the publications of these academics in international, peer-reviewed and indexed journals: the number of publications, the cumulative SCImago journal rank of these publications (which measures quality from an output perspective) and the citations obtained by these publications (which measures visibility). The results show that different mobilities have different effects on research output, quality and visibility, and that often these effects can be beneficial to one indicator but concurrently detrimental to another. Nested analyses of science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) and non-STEM academics, and by sex, offer further insight into the associations of these mobilities with knowledge output and outcomes.info:eu-repo/semantics/acceptedVersio