International circulation can improve research

Academic mobility, particularly abroad, helps boost scientific productivity

Physicist César Mansueto Giulio Lattes (1924–2005)—the namesake for the Lattes Platform, Brazil’s main researcher CV database—might not have come close to winning the Nobel Prize twice for discovering the pi meson particle if he had not had access to the world’s largest laboratories, namely in Bristol, England, and in Chicago, USA, in 1940.

Even while based in Brazil, during the second half of the last century, many of the advances in physics made by Lattes at institutions such as the Brazilian Center for Research in Physics (CBPF) and the Institute for Theoretical Physics at São Paulo State University (IFT-UNESP) required collaboration with Japanese researchers, who crossed the world to bolster Brazilian science.

There are thousands of other lesser known cases similar to that of Lattes that could be mentioned. But the fact of the matter is, since as early as 1920, the scientific arena has witnessed the global circulation of brains, which in turn helps to accelerate the production of knowledge.

Published in February in the Journal of Informetrics, the paper “International mobility characteristics, effects of, and effects on elite scientists,” written by four Chinese researchers, analyzed the migratory processes that have taken place in science over the last 100 years, between 1920 and 2020.

The Chinese group’s analysis of data on 78,815 scientists reveals that migration, proportionally speaking, was at its peak between 1920 and 1960. It then plateaued and, in the last two decades, has declined.

During the period in question, nearly 57% (44,798) of the scientists moved abroad at least once in their careers. Among them, 9,697 scientists moved permanently and 18,344 returned to their country of academic origin by the end of the period in question.

In order to define each scientific author’s country of origin, the study used data from the scientific journal platform Scopus. The final funnel for the list of names used in the work emerged from the Chinese authors’ definition of “elite scientists.” In other words, names that fall into the top 1% of the h-index each year.

This metric is determined by the number of articles published and cited by a scientist in a given period, in this case during the same year. For example, an h-index value of 10 indicates that the scholar received at least 10 citations for each of the 10 articles published over the course of 12 months. To increase the h-index value from 10 to 15, the same scholar must receive at least 15 citations for the 15 articles also published that same year.

More countries participated in international mobility

When the data being processed shifted from names to countries, so did the trend observed over the last 100 years.

In the last two decades, the number of countries participating in international mobility has increased.

On the one hand, North American and some Western European countries still act as high-level science centers—ever since a youthful Lattes crossed the Atlantic to Bristol at the age of 22.

On the other hand, emerging economies have also become important mobility hubs since the year 2000. The dominant flow, in this case, is made up of scientists who returned to their country of origin within two years.

Focusing more on the geography of brain circulation, the results show that 199 countries were involved in 965,761 migratory processes between 1921 and 2020. The study identified the country listed in the first article published by an author registered with Scopus as their country of academic origin.

On the list of the top 20 nations with the most scientific mobility, Brazil ranks twentieth. The first five spots are held by the USA, China (who received 17,023 visiting researchers between 2001 and 2020), the UK, Germany, and Italy.

The network analysis results, according to the article’s authors, further confirm the trend of global “multicenters” by showing “decreasing betweenness centrality” among the involved countries or countries with a large population.

India and Russia, as well as Brazil, appear to be the most significant in terms of the flow recorded by the study.

“International mobility is very advantageous and is broadly discussed in the literature,” states Samile Vanz, a professor at the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul’s (UFRGS) Information Sciences Department. According to the researcher, participation in international projects, in addition to being personally beneficial, also allows scholars to learn novel and different techniques, exposing them to new scientific methodologies.

“During these international experiences, scientists who cross borders can also broaden their knowledge and develop new ways of looking at a research topic,” says Samile Vanz, of UFRGS.

Some areas benefit more

While the benefits of international connections can be applied to all areas, some benefit more than others.

According to the study published in the Journal of Informetrics, mathematics, despite the small number of elite researchers analyzed (846), is the field that has seen the most scientists traveling abroad (694 researchers, or 82% of the sample).

Physics and Astronomy is the second-largest field for global brain circulation (1,686 out of 2,130 researchers analyzed in these fields of knowledge). Meanwhile, engineers take third place, with 3,338 scientists (out of 4,530) who made at least one international move in their careers.

As discussed by the researchers in the article, highly qualified scientists are crucial knowledge carriers. Accordingly, modern economies strive to invest in elite scientists to maintain a competitive advantage.

Nowadays, even the most experienced researchers receive incentives through public policies to travel abroad. As a result, short-term exchange has become a popular form of international mobility.

In contrast, studies in Brazil also highlight the importance of scientific circulation. “Hiring professors with doctoral degrees from the same institution does not seem to harm academic performance, especially for scholars who have experience abroad with a ‘Sandwich PhD’ or a post-doctorate,” explains engineer Denis Borenstein, a professor at the Management School at UFRGS.

“These findings go against the conclusions made in previous studies related to [academic] inbreeding in various countries. One hypothesis for this may be our Latino way of conducting research, in which personal relationships weigh more heavily than academic competence,” he says.

In May 2022, Borenstein published an article in the Journal of Informetrics analyzing so-called “academic inbreeding.” The paper was based on data related to 76,521 Brazilian scientists from all fields of knowledge who completed their doctorates between 2000 and 2016 and who, at the time the study was conducted, were working at a public or private Brazilian teaching and research institution.

Academic inbreeding

The phenomenon known as “academic inbreeding” refers to the practice of hiring professors who have graduated from the same institution at which they will be employed.

In the long term, Borenstein points out, the phenomenon can lead to what is known in biology as “inbreeding depression,” i.e., a reduction in characteristics related to the aptitude of the descendants of individuals in a given population.

Several authors have published articles arguing that academic inbreeding can generate a lack of diversity in research, local thinking instead of global, and can reinforce questionable administrative and academic practices. This practice has been pinpointed as a potential problem for academic activities, particularly scientific research.

With regard to academic productivity, both the article written abroad and the Brazilian article make the same conclusion: international circulation increases research quality. The main discovery made by the Brazilian group, however, is that cases of inbreeding are, in general, more productive and outperform non-inbreeding cases in almost all measures of academic productivity.

“In addition, we found that researchers who worked elsewhere before joining the staff at the institution that conferred their doctorate are more productive in general,” write Borenstein and his colleagues in the conclusion to their article.

“Academic mobility can impact productivity and when considered alongside the positive effect of completing a period of study abroad, it appears that supporting exchange programs, such as post-doctorates, is an efficient way of increasing overall scientific productivity.”

This does not mean, the group warns, that the issue of academic inbreeding does not pose specific threats, especially long-term, such as problems related to nepotism, parochialism, cronyism, favoritism, and discrimination.

“All the unethical, discriminatory, illegal, and unjust attitudes that have been highlighted by research literature on academic inbreeding should be strongly opposed by the scientific community,” state the scientists, not dismissing the fact that academic inbreeding remains a controversial issue.

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