Abstract
BackgroundThe establishment of scientific collaborations with researchers abroad can be considered a good practice to make appropriate use of their knowledge and to increase the possibilities of them returning to their country. This paper analyses the collaboration between Spanish researchers abroad devoted to health sciences and national science institutions.MethodsWe used the Fontes’ approach to perform a study on this collaboration with Spanish researchers abroad. We measured the level of national and international cooperation, the opportunity provided by the host country to collaborate, the promotion of collaboration by national science institutions, and the types of collaboration. A total of 88 biomedical researchers out of the 268 Spanish scientists who filled up the survey participated in the study. Different data analyses were performed to study the variables selected to measure the scientific collaboration and profile of Spanish researchers abroad.ResultsThere is a high level of cooperation between Spanish health science researchers abroad and international institutions, which contrasts with the small-scale collaboration with national institutions. Host countries facilitate this collaboration with national and international scientific institutions to a larger extent than the level of collaboration promotion carried out by Spanish institutions.ConclusionsThe national collaboration with Spanish researchers abroad in the health sciences is limited. Thus, the practice of making appropriate use of the potential of their expertise should be promoted and the opportunities for Spanish health science researchers to return home should be improved.Electronic supplementary materialThe online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s12961-015-0055-2) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.
Highlights
The establishment of scientific collaborations with researchers abroad can be considered a good practice to make appropriate use of their knowledge and to increase the possibilities of them returning to their country
Level of national and international scientific collaboration As discussed above, a Kruskal–Wallis test was conducted in order to compare the average ranks of the four groups in seven questions relative to the three first variables
To gain further insight into this result, the post-hoc contrast was applied with the Mann–Whitney test. These analyses indicate that the main differences lay between health sciences versus social and legal sciences and humanities (U = 340, Z = −2.575, P = 0.010, r = 0.123) and between social and legal sciences and humanities versus engineering and architecture (U = 121, Z = −2.647, P = 0.008, r = 0.123); there were no significant differences between other pairs of areas. These results indicate that researchers in the health sciences have a lower degree of collaboration with their Spanish scientific institution of origin than their colleagues in the social and legal sciences and humanities
Summary
The establishment of scientific collaborations with researchers abroad can be considered a good practice to make appropriate use of their knowledge and to increase the possibilities of them returning to their country. Aceituno-Aceituno et al Health Research Policy and Systems (2015) 13:67 benefits to their countries of origin without losing their professional positions in their destination countries, while being economically affordable for their countries of origin [7]. A long-term stay of researchers overseas (3 years or more) has a negative impact on the collaboration networks with the country of origin [10] This is because the number of relationships created abroad exceeds the ones kept with the national network, and with this the drain goes from being transitory to permanent [11]. Fontes demonstrates that every researcher who returns kept ties with their institution of origin [15] Establishing these connections might not be easy. It is interesting to further study these aspects relative to collaboration to report back to the political authorities and others agents interested in improving the benefits of scientific mobility
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