Migration currents among the scientific elite

Minerva

Volumn 43, Issue 4, 2005, Pages 377-395

  Laudel, Grit ^a  

^a AUSTRALIAN NATIONAL UNIVERSITY   (Australia)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 33644539213     PISSN: 00264695     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1007/s11024-005-2474-7     Document Type: Review

References (48)

1. BMBF, 'Beitrag des BMBF zum Fragenkatalog für die öffentliche Anhörung, Chancen und Risiken der Informationsgesellschaft' am 28 Mai 2001 (Kdrs. 14/10b), (Berlin: Deutscher Bundestag, 2001), 7.
2. Australian Research Council, 'Federation Fellowships', Discovery Newsletter (December, 2001), 1-2.
3. J. Pickrell, 'Fighting Brain Drain - Ireland Gives Its Stars a Big Pot o' Gold', Science, 293 (5532), (2001), 1028-1029;
4. Kirstie Urquhart, 'European Science - UK Unveils "Brain Gain" Initiative', Science, 289 (5480), (2000), 713-713;
5. and D. Spurgeon, 'Canada Tries to Limit Nanotech Brain Drain', Nature, 408 (6812), (2000), 623-623.
6. For example, David Hume, 'Research Funding in Australia: Plugging the Brain Drain', Search, 25 (1), (1994), 27-31;
7. M. Sincell, 'Why do the World's Leading Scientists Flock to the United States?', Physics World, 13 (8), (2000), 10-11;
8. Alexander Hellemans, 'Beating the Brain Drain', Naturejobs, 414 (2001), 4-5;
9. Sam Jaffe, 'Migrating Minds'. Scientist, 16 (9), (2002), 39-41;
10. and Xavier Bosch, 'Brain Drain Robbing Europe of Its Brightest Young Scientists - Money and Independence Lure Young Researchers to the USA, Scientists Say', Lancet, 361 (9376), (2003), 2210-2211.
11. Australian Society for Medical Research, The ASMR Workplace Survey (1999), cited at: http://www.asmr.org.au/news/Wkplc/wshp.pdf,
12. Christoph F. Buechtemann, 'Deutsche Nachwuchswissenschaftler in den U.S.A. - Ergebnisse der Vorstudie', in Bundesministerium für Bildung und Forschung, Deutsche Nachwuchswissenschaftler in den USA: Perspektiven der Hochschul- und Wissenschaftspolitik (Bonn: BMBF, 2001), 19-89;
13. Stifterverband für die Deutsche Wissenschaft, Brain Drain - Brain Gain: Eine Untersuchung über internationale Berufskarrieren (Kassel: GES, 2002);
14. and Katja Schär, Swiss Brains in the United States (Basel: Gerbert RÜF Stiftung, 2002).
15. A recent workshop at the New York Academy of Science, which focused on scientists' international mobility, concluded that the existence of a 'brain drain' to the USA remains an open question. Rabya S. Tuma, Brain Circulation: Promoting Transatlantic Science, Academy Briefings (New York: New York Academy of Sciences, 12 May 2004).
16. A study of German postdoctoral fellows in the USA observed a general loss of scientists to the USA, but did not examine 'elites'. Jürgen Enders and Alexis-Michel Mugabushaka, Wissenschaft und Karriere: Erfahrungen und Werdegänge ehemaliger Stipendiaten der DFG (Bonn: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, 2004), 43-44.
17. For example, Susan Crawford, 'Informal Communication among Scientists in Sleep Research', Journal of the American Society for Information Science, 22 (5), (1971), 301-310;
18. P.M.D. Collins, G.K. Radda, IH. Silverleaf, and D.C. Smith, 'Flows of Researchers to and from the UK', Nature, 328 (6125), (1987), 27-28;
19. Paula E. Stephan and Sharon G. Levin, 'Exceptional Contributions to US Science by the Foreign-Born and Foreign-Educated', Population Research and Policy Review, 20 (1-2), (2001), 59-79.
20. Buechtemann, op, cit. Population Research and Policy Review, note 5, 73-80.
21. Similar reasons were mentioned in the Swiss study; Schär, op. cit. Population Research and Policy Review, note 5.
22. Dominique Martin-Rovet and Timothy Carlson, 'The International Exchange of Scholars: The Training of Young Scientists through Research Abroad, 2. American Scientists in France', Minerva, 33 (2), (1995), 171-191, 183-186;
23. Timothy Carlson and Dominique Martin-Rovet, 'The Implications of Scientific Mobility between France and the United-States', Minerva, 33 (3), (1995), 211-250; 246-247.
24. Harriet Zuckerman, Scientific Elite: Nobel Laureates in the United States (New York: Free Press, 1977), 9-11.
25. Michael Mulkay, 'The Mediating Role of the Scientific Elite', Social Studies of Science, 6 (3-4), (1976), 445-470, 446-454.
26. That elite members produce other elite members was empirically confirmed by Zuckermann, op. cit. Social Studies of Science, note 9, 99-100.
27. The term 'mobility' is also used to describe cognitive changes in a scientist's work, such as 'intellectual mobility', see Terry Shinn and Georges Benguigui, 'Physicists and Intellectual Mobility', Social Science Information, 36 (2), (1997), 293-309;
28. or such as 'interspecialty migration', see Daryl E. Chubin, 'The Conceptualization of Scientific Specialties', Sociological Quarterly, 17 (4), (1976), 448-476, 465-470.
29. See also Elizabeth Crawford, Terry Shinn, and Sverker Sörlin, 'The Nationalization and Denationalization of the Sciences: An Introductory Essay', in Elizabeth Crawford, Terry Shinn, and Sverker Sörlin (eds.), Denationalizing Science (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1993) 1-42, 25.
30. For example, Sami Mahroum has stated that recruitment from overseas by a British university makes a professor, a senior lecturer, or even a lecturer a 'star scientist'. See Sami Mahroum, 'Global Magnets: Science and Technology Disciplines and Departments in the United Kingdom', Minerva, 37 (4), (1999), 379-390, 381-382.
31. See, for example, Virginia Trimble, 'Some Characteristics of Young vs. Established American Astronomers: Entering the New Century', Scientometrics, 48 (3), (2000), 403-411.
32. See, for example, Anthony J.F. van Raan, 'In Matters of Quantitative Studies of Science the Fault of Theorists is offering too little and asking too much', Scientometrics, 43 (1), (1998), 129-139.
33. For a more extensive discussion of these methodological problems, see Grit Laudel, 'Studying the Brain Drain: Can Bibliometric Methods Help?', Scientometrics, 51 (2), (2003), 215-237.
34. Jointly, the two journals cover all major fields in science, albeit unevenly. According to the Science website (accessed on 28 October 2004), since the mid 1990s, a total of 32,535 articles have been published, 54% in the life sciences, 36% in the physical sciences, and 10% in other fields. Nature leans more strongly towards the life sciences, with only 1% of its research and review articles in physics (author's calculations).
35. The data were retrieved from publication databases provided by the Institute of Scientific Information (ISI), namely the SCI on CD-ROM for 1980-1999 and the Web of Science for 2000-2002.
36. This method was introduced by Nederhof and Moed to cope with publications where more than one country is involved. If authors from n countries participate in a publication, a country is assigned not the whole publication (1) but the proportion of 1/n (A.J. Nederhof and H.F. Moed, 'Modeling Multinational Publication: Development of an On-line Fractionation Approach to Measure National Scientific Output', Scientometrics, 27 (1), (1993), 39-52, 41). For the purpose of this investigation, the counting was reduced to two fractions, 'US' and 'Non-US'.
37. Addresses and authors are not an exact match. Sometimes, authors have two different addresses, and the addresses of authors from the same institution and research group are usually given only once. However, as with the homonyms, it is assumed that the error is constant and thus does not affect the dynamics of proportions.
38. In particular, there is no indication that the end of the Cold War has affected the international distribution of the scientific elite. This is not surprising because the socialist science system never played a significant role in world science. Bibliometric data have shown the discrepancy between their publishing activities and the perception of their contributions by other scientists, as measured by citation (T. Braun, W. Glänzel, H. Maczelka, and A. Schubert, 'World Science in the Eighties: National Performances in Publication Output and Citation Impact, 1985-1989 versus 1980-1984', Scientometrics, Part I, 29 (3), (1994), 299-334;
39. In particular, there is no indication that the end of the Cold War has affected the international distribution of the scientific elite. This is not surprising because the socialist science system never played a significant role in world science. Bibliometric data have shown the discrepancy between their publishing activities and the perception of their contributions by other scientists, as measured by citation (T. Braun, W. Glänzel, H. Maczelka, and A. Schubert, 'World Science in the Eighties: National Performances in Publication Output and Citation Impact, 1985-1989 versus 1980-1984', Scientometrics, Part II, 31 (1), (1994), 3-30).
40. For a more detailed description of the methods and the reasons for choosing them, see Laudel, op. cit. Scientometrics, Part II note 15.
41. I disregarded the general Anglo-Saxon bias in the SCI because, in the two specialties investigated, English has been the dominant language and thus the language of the field. A specific US bias might lead to an over-emphasis of US-based elite members. However, the relative stability of proportions of elite members obtained by applying different thresholds indicates otherwise.
42. I have used the PhD as a starting point because the existence of a postdoctoral phase is evidence of an intent to continue a scientific career, while other postgraduate studies are undertaken for a variety of reasons. In medical areas, scientists sometimes have a medical degree as their highest degree. In these cases, I have used the medical degree as a starting point.
43. Stephen Cole and Jonathan R. Cole, 'Visibility and the Structural Bases of Awareness of Scientific Research', American Sociological Review, 33 (3), (1968), 397-412, 400.
44. In order to identify citations from the specialties, it would be necessary to delineate them and to identify all their members. This cannot be done since bibliometricians have yet to develop satisfying methods for delineating specialities (Laudel, op. cit. American Sociological Review, note 15).
45. Buechtemann, op. cit. American Sociological Review, note 5, 73-75.
46. Stifterverband, op. cit. American Sociological Review, note 5, 86;
47. Schär, op. cit. American Sociological Review, note 5, 19.
48. Jochen Gläser, 'Scientific Specialties as the (Currently Missing) link between Scientometrics and the Sociology of Science', in Mari Davis and Concepción S. Wilson (eds.), Proceedings of the 8th International Conference on Scientometrics and Informetrics (Sydney, 16-20 July 2001), 191-210, 203.