When researchers move, knowledge moves with them, shaping how knowledge spreads and innovation emerges. A new study tracks the early-career mobility of 172,000 scientists to understand what drives where they go.
Understanding scientific mobility requires more than knowing who moves – it requires understanding the forces that shape where researchers go, an the role of networks and institutional prestige in academic mobility play. Do scientist tend to move to institutions where they have prior co-authors, reflecting individual ties, or to institutions where their organizations typically collaborate?
To better understand these dynamics, a team of researchers tracked early career moves of 172,000 scientists over two decades (1996–2020). “Most research on academic mobility asks about who moves and the consequences of it. Our research asks: given that scientists move, what determines the direction they take?” says Ola Ali from the Complexity Science Hub. The study was published in PNAS Nexus.
WHAT THEY FOUND
| 1 | Both personal and institutional ties play a role, though personal networks appear stronger.
| 2 | Individual ties are strongly correlated to where scientists move. But it’s not just direct collaborations that play a crucial role. Connections to the co-authors’ collaborators shape career moves too.
| 3 | Yet context matters. Scientists with extensive individual professional networks tend to move along personal lines, while those from prestigious institutions are more likely to follow institutional pathways instead. Institutional prestige conditions these patterns: scholars from less prestigious institutions show a stronger association between individual ties and the direction of their move, while those from highly prestigious institutions are less likely to rely on prior personal connections, says Ali.
| 4 | Geography shapes the pattern. Cross-border moves tend to follow personal networks more. Moves within a country more often follow institutional channels.
WHY THIS MATTERS
As science budgets come under pressure and international exchange programs are reshaped, where qualified researchers go will play a key role in shaping how science and scientific institutions develop.
About the study
The study “The role of professional networks and institutional prestige in shaping the first career moves of scholars,” by A. Rottenkolber, O. Ali , G. Mónus, J. Li, J. Kim, D. Perrotta, and A. Akbaritabar, was published in PNAS Nexus (doi: 10.1093/pnasnexus/pgag168).
