Research upon return: The effect of international mobility on scientific ties, production and impact

Abstract

Highly skilled return migrants contribute to the establishment of ties between the home and host systems. This paper studies how the professional ties, which Argentinean researchers built up during the time spent in foreign research systems, influence their collaboration patterns and their research outputs upon return. It confirms the expectation that having foreign work experience helps to explain the propensity to co-publish internationally and it also shows that researchers collaborate to a higher degree with their former host system. Another central finding is that foreign work experience has a positive effect on the propensity to publish in journals with a high impact factor. Additionally, a large share of this type of research is published without international co-authorship. We therefore do no not find evidence of a lack of publication autonomy in the case of Argentinean returnees.