Abstract
The increasing literature addressing international mobility of researchers has repeatedly pointed out the lack of empirical data compiled over the last two decades, jeopardizing progress in the understanding of the characteristics and impacts of such human flows. This paper makes a contribution to the field by exploring the extent to which information obtained from researchers’ electronic curriculum vitae (CV) may be used to study temporary geographical mobility. We exploit a new type of data set—a comprehensive database of electronic CVs—developing a broad set of cross-discipline mobility indicators to assess the dimensions and characteristics of international research visits among a population of over 10,000 researchers. The sample population is made up of PhD holders working in the regional research system of Andalusia, Spain. Information regarding their international research visits over the last four decades is downloaded from CVs contained in the electronic scientific information system of the region. We assess mobility rates and the characteristics of the temporary mobile population. The analysis of visiting patterns shows significant differences in mobility profiles in terms of frequency, duration and destination of visits, across disciplines, career stages and time periods. The study also shows how different definitions of international mobility lead to substantial variations in cross-discipline mobility rates.
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Notes
Mahroum (2000) defines scientific mobility as a cross border physical and geographic movement that comprises a stay in another country for no less than one year.
http://ipts.jrc.ec.europa.eu/activities/research-and-innovation/iiser.cfm. Date of last access: July 22nd, 2011.
The following website provides links to European projects aimed at developing indicators of career tracks and mobility of researchers, such as: RESCAR, ERAWATCH, DOC-CAREERS, MORE: http://ec.europa.eu/euraxess/index.cfm/general/researchPolicies. Information on the OECD project on careers of doctorate holders may be found at: http://www.oecd.org/document/63/0,3343,en_2649_34409_39945471_1_1_1_1,00.html. See also Auriol (2010)
The RVM program is currently based at Arizona State University. See http://www.cspo.org/rvm/.
A study based on survey data in Spain, however, leads Cruz-Castro and Sanz-Menéndez (2010) to conclude that post-doctoral mobility is not rewarding in terms of career progression, mainly due to institutional and cultural features of Spanish academia.
The report from the European project MORE points out however that, according to the results obtained in Europe “research visits is a much more common international mobility form than job changes across countries” (MORE 2010a, p. 224).
The database does not contain information on researchers working in the private sector, unless they are integrated into public research groups through collaboration.
Further details on the implementation of e-CV systems in several countries may be found in the report of the European Project PRIME-Euro-CV: July 22nd, 2011: http://www.enideurope.org/PRIME/documents/EUROcvREPORT_FINAL_08_08_09.pdf.
We eliminate researchers older than 70 following the methodology of the Spanish Survey on Human Resources in Science and Technology, available at: http://www.ine.es. Date of last access: July 22nd, 2011.
As the type of mobility under study is temporary mobility (short to medium term mobility), defined as research visits abroad of one week to two years of duration, the group that is non-temporary mobile may include both researchers that have not undertaken any type of mobility and those that have undertaken other types of mobility, such as international job mobility (long term work contracts abroad) or education mobility (e.g. foreign doctorate).
A direct comparison of the structure of this population with its equivalent at the national level is not possible with the data currently available at the National Institute of Statistics. However, the data from the 2009 Survey on Human Resources on Science and Technology provides the following estimation of the broad disciplinary structure of the national population of PhD holders (including those employed in the private sector and those who are unemployed or inactive): Natural Sciences (approximately equivalent to BIO + PCM + ENV in the SICA classification) = 33%; Engineering and Technology (PTE + ICT) = 8%; Medical Sciences (STH) = 21%, Agricultural Sciences (AGR) = 3%; Social Sciences (SSC) = 20% and Humanities (HUM) 15% (source: Date of last access to http://www.ine.es, July 22nd, 2011). According to these rates, PhDs in the medical and social sciences could be under-represented in the Andalusian studied population whilst those in the humanities and agricultural sciences might be over-represented compared to the national population. Data from the two sources is not fully comparable however.
Stability tests are very often used in on-line quality control checks in production environments (Armingol et al. 2003), and they are referred to as control charts in the statistical process control (SPC) literature (Grant and Leavenworth 2000). Their objective is to detect out-of-control samples, those whose averages are significantly different than the overall average. These tests can also be applied to compare mobility across disciplines. Each sample (discipline) is compared against the population average and instability (different behavior) is determined by excessive differences between sample value and overall average, accounting for different sample sizes. We have used stars to visualize and differentiate between significantly below-average performance (two stars) and significantly above-average performance (one star). These tests might be applied to percentages (i.e. Table 1) or to average values (i.e., Table 4). We will refer to them as p-tests or p-charts and mean-tests or mean-charts, respectively.
Based on a survey methodology, the European Study MORE (2010a, b), finds an equivalent mobility rate (share of researchers with international visits) of 42% in the higher education sector (same than our study for this regional population) and 47% in the non-university research institutes, which is above the indicator we find (43%) for the national research council (CSIC). CSIC, however, does not represent all non-university research institutes of the region.
Out of the data provided by the MORE report, it is not possible to obtain or calculate the share of researchers having experienced international temporary research visits over the total surveyed population, but only over the total mobile population.
Precocity is one of the major dimensions to analyze researchers’ careers proposed by the Buenos Aires Manual on Indicators of Human Resources on Science and Technology, which is currently under development. The concept refers to events that happen early in the career of a researcher, when compared to normal or average practice in the group of reference, for example early co-ordination of research projects, early publication practices, etc. (D’Onofrio et al. 2010). Table 8 reflects the use of the term precocity to address the question “how early researchers go on their first temporary international visit?” This is measured in relation to PhD completion. Minus (−) implies that on average, researchers go on their first visit before finishing the PhD (e.g. 1 year before completing the PhD in Agricultural sciences). In contrast, a positive indicator implies that the first visit takes normally place after finishing the PhD (e.g. PCM).
Edler et al. (2011) conduct a survey-based study of temporary mobility patterns of German academics to assess their impact on knowledge and technology transfer (KTT) activities. They distinguish between groups of researchers for whom mobility is characterized by frequency and those for which it is rather characterized by intensity or longer duration, finding different types of impacts in terms of KTT for different types of mobility. The study does not include however a cross-disciplinary assessment and does not consider social and human scientists in the analyzed sample.
Jöns defines three dimensions that contribute to determine the degree of place specificity/ubiquity and individuality/collectivity of scientific knowledge production: (im)materiality, standardization and abstraction (2007, pp. 108–110). For example, the high degree of materiality that characterizes research dependent on certain technical equipment, archival material or field sites leads to high levels of place specificity that will shape the patterns of mobility in the field.
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Acknowledgments
This study was initiated in the framework of two projects which provided resources for data processing and international collaboration: The project EURO-CV (Building indicators for researchers’ mobility based on electronic curriculum vitae) funded by the European Network of Excellence PRIME (Policies for Research and Innovation in the Move towards the European Research Area; Project CIT1-CT-2003-506596 under the sixth European Framework Program) and the project CV-IBEROAMERICANO (Scientific careers of Argentinean and Spanish researchers: a comparative study based on CV analysis) funded by the Spanish National Agency for Cooperation and Development (AECID). Preliminary results of the study were presented in meetings within the above two projects, and also at the Annual Meeting for the Society of the Social Studies of Science in 2009, at the XI Conference of the Spanish Sociology Association (June, 2010) and at the Workshop on Internationalisation in Higher Education: Socio-legal perspectives on Contemporary Mobilities (University of Cambridge, November 2010). The authors would like to thank the numerous colleagues that provided feedback in these various fora. We are also highly grateful to the “Consejería de Economía, Innovación y Ciencia” at the Regional Government of Andalusia for providing the data for the study. In particular, we thank Samaly Santa for downloading all the utilized information from the electronic CV system. Finally, we would like to express our gratitude to Richard Woolley for his detailed comments and suggestions to the draft.
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Cañibano, C., Otamendi, F.J. & Solís, F. International temporary mobility of researchers: a cross-discipline study. Scientometrics 89, 653–675 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-011-0462-2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-011-0462-2