A bibliometric approach to tracking international scientific migration

Abstract

A bibliometric approach is explored to tracking international scientific migration, based on an analysis of the affiliation countries of authors publishing in peer reviewed journals indexed in Scopus™. The paper introduces a model that relates base concepts in the study of migration to bibliometric constructs, and discusses the potentialities and limitations of a bibliometric approach both with respect to data accuracy and interpretation. Synchronous and asynchronous analyses are presented for 10 rapidly growing countries and 7 scientifically established countries. Rough error rates of the proposed indicators are estimated. It is concluded that the bibliometric approach is promising provided that its outcomes are interpreted with care, based on insight into the limits and potentialities of the bibliometric approach, and combined with complementary data, obtained, for instance, from researchers' Curricula Vitae or survey or questionnaire based data. Error rates for units of assessment with indicator values based on sufficiently large numbers are estimated to be fairly below 10 per cent, but can be expected to vary substantially among countries of origin, especially between Asian countries and Western countries.

Travel bans and scientific mobility: utility of asymmetry and affinity indexes to inform science policy

“…However, less understood is how scientists from different countries establish ties through migration. The use of bibliometric methods, in particular, has received scant attention, with a few notable exceptions at the individual (Laudel 2003) and country level (Moed and Halevi 2014;Sugimoto et al 2016Sugimoto et al , 2017. This paper extends on previous bibliometric studies of mobility in order to demonstrate insights that can be gained by examining multiple forms of scientific partnerships in concert.…”

“…By using affiliation data from scientific publications, it is possible to track the trajectory of individual scientists and analyze collaboration and mobility patterns at meso and macro levels (Moed and Halevi 2014;Sugimoto et al 2017;Wagner et al 2018). A bibliometric approach allows us to conduct a comparative study of number of mobile researchers and the amount of internationally co-authored papers countries have.…”

The Demography of the Peripatetic Researcher: Evidence on Highly Mobile Scholars from the Web of Science

“…In the global economy, highly skilled migration [9] and the mobility of researchers [4] have become central issues for research and policy. The interest in these issues is reflected in numerous studies that have investigated the mobility of researchers across countries [5,10,17,[19][20][21][22]26,30]. In this article, we focus on the movements of researchers as a subcategory of mobility processes among highly educated people, which have far-reaching consequences for the exchange of knowledge and the development of new ideas, as well as for the emergence of competitive advantages for the countries involved in the resulting circulation of knowledge.…”

“…Studying migration among the highly skilled (and researchers in particular) at the global level is difficult using classic demographic methods, in part because a world migration survey does not exist [33]. Recent studies that have examined international mobility among researchers have used bibliometric data as a complementary approach [10,20]. This method involves tracking the international movements of researchers through the changes in the affiliation addresses on their publications.…”

Accuracy evaluation of Scopus Author ID based on the largest funding database in Japan

“…For example, in Scopus, one of the newly available items related to individual-level analyses is author identification (Author ID, Scopus 2014), which can be used directly for individual identification based on some trust of accuracy (Roberge and Campbell 2012;Moed et al 2013;Conchi and Michels 2014;Ioannidis et al 2014;Moed and Halevi 2014). If the Author ID is reliable, then complete enumeration using this identifier will have significant advantages over traditional identification by CV, especially in large-scale research related to, for example, analysis for national science and technology policy decisions.…”