A new bibliometric approach to measure knowledge transfer of internationally mobile scientists

Abstract

This study introduces a new bibliometric approach to study the effects of international scientific mobility on knowledge transfer. It is based on an analysis of internationally mobile and non-internationally mobile German scientists publishing in journals that are indexed in Scopus. Using bibliometric data such co-authored articles, references and lexical abstract terms from the Scopus database, a method is presented that is based on cosine similarity to measure the similarity of the knowledge base of authors and their co-authors. This quantifiable method is capable of revealing potential knowledge transfer between internationally mobile scientists and different types of co-authors. In addition, the Shannon index is used as a diversity measure to analyse the knowledge base of scientists. Analyses are presented for an overall 9-year publication period (2007–2015), split into a pre-mobility phase, a mobility phase and a post-mobility phase, each of which lasts for 3 years. Internationally mobile scientists are compared with non-internationally mobile scientists and the potentials and limitations of the method presented are discussed. It is concluded that the bibliometric approach proposed is useful when applied on a large scale. International mobility proves to benefit the exchange of knowledge between scientists and various types of co-authors.