Academic Mobility Assessment: the Strengths and Limitations of Different Approaches

Abstract

The article discusses methodological approaches to measuring academic mobility when a researcher changes his place of work within the academic environment. Researchers’ academic mobility is a factor of their productivity, it provides knowledge transfer, renews scientific ideas, and in general contributes to the active development of higher education and science. However, in Russia the phenomenon of academic mobility is not studied sufficiently and demands an estimation of both mobility as a whole, and its factors, and its consequences. There are not many data sources on mobility, and getting corresponding information is often problematic – these factors make it difficult to empirically measure researchers’ academic mobility. This review might be the first step towards filling the gap in empirical research on academic mobility in Russia. The author suggests a detailed analysis of academic mobility assessment methodologies, including surveys, CVs, bibliometric and combined approaches. The article summarizes the experience of practical approaches application, identifies advantages and disadvantages of each of them, and provides their comparative analysis. The author comes to the conclusion that in the absence of a unique approach to measuring the academic mobility, the bibliometric approach, which provides large representative samplings, research results reproducibility, and greater possibilities of mobility factors assessment, best meets the goals of modern research on causality of academic mobility. This paper should help those who study science and higher education in selecting the most suitable approach to academic mobility measurement and in considering a number of nuances of each approach as practically applied in the research planning process.