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Researcher geographic mobility and publication productivity: an investigation into individual and institutional characteristics and the roles of academicians

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Abstract

This paper investigates the within country geographic mobility of researcher from their graduating universities and its relationship with publication productivity, paying special attention to the roles of Academicians, a member of the Chinese Academy of Science or Engineering. Various individual and institutional characteristics of researchers in environmental science and engineering in China and their publication productivity are collected and analyzed. We find that researcher geographic mobility from graduating institutions is generally associated with individual traits such as academic rank and age, and institutional characteristics such as school ranking and location. Researchers moving further away from their graduating institutions are generally associated with less productivity. The negative association can be explained by the fact that a significant portion of researchers stay within the same university where they received their highest degree; and these researchers are more productive than their peers who are hired from external institutions. Having an Academician in an institution is shown to be positively related to the likelihood of same university hires, and meanwhile positively related to higher publication productivity.

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Notes

  1. Distributions of academicians across different universities can be found at https://www.edu.cn/.

  2. Specific college names may vary slightly on the web page(s).

  3. Individuals who are not directly hired right after graduation but have worked elsewhere before coming back to their Alma Mater, would not be counted as academic inbreeding cases (Berelson 1960). In our data collection, most individuals do not belong to this type. Because, once a graduate takes the initial position, the mobility to another institution has been extremely low. This has been the case for a long time in the past of Chinese higher education system. The unique phenomenon has lasted till recent years.

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Correspondence to Chaojiang Wu.

Appendix

Appendix

Table 7 presents the regression results using Heckman sample selection bias correction technique. Column (1) shows the first state regression where the probability of stay within the same university of training. Column (2) shows the productivity regression when the reverse Mills ratio is added into the regression.

Table 7 Regression results for Heckman sample selection bias correction

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Peng, C., Li, Z. & Wu, C. Researcher geographic mobility and publication productivity: an investigation into individual and institutional characteristics and the roles of academicians. Scientometrics 128, 379–406 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-022-04546-9

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