Moving more, but closer: Mapping the growing regionalization of global scientific mobility using ORCID

Abstract

This article investigates the taken-for-granted notion of scientific mobility as fundamentally “global.” We use self- reported biographical profile data of over a hundred thousand scientists from ORCID (Open Researcher and Contributor ID) who received a Ph.D. between the 1980s and 2010s. These data are advantageous over data commonly used to trace scientific mobility like surveys and disambiguated bibliometric data, as ORCID data offer both publication histories and a curriculum vitae itemization of scientists’ education and employment. We find that scientists who do move internationally in their careers increasingly move within the same transnational region. Furthermore, while we find that mobility between countries has remained stagnant since the 1980s as compared to mobility within countries, scientists who move internationally do so more frequently but for shorter distances. European and Asian Ph.D. holders comprise the majority of scientists who are driving these trends.