Abstract
The increasing mobility of elite research talents has become a widely discussed topic in recent years. This study aims to explore the effect of mobility experiences on the research performance of Chinese scholars by collecting work experience data from 666 recipients of the National Natural Science Foundation for Distinguished Young Scholars (Jieqing) and their publicly available research output data. The study employed the entropy balancing matching method to minimize endogeneity bias in the sample. The study yielded several new findings. Firstly, the enterprise mobility experience has a positive effect on the quality of research output but does not affect the quantity of research output. Secondly, unlike in developed countries where "downward mobility" is found to have a suppressive effect on research performance, job mobility of elite research talents in China who move to non-first-class universities significantly contributes to research performance. This paper constructs the theoretical conditions for the innovative knowledge production of elite research talents and explains it. Using this theoretical condition, not only can we explain the mobility of Chinese scientific research talents, but we can also predict and explain the effect of the mobility of other research objects that have not been verified by data validation on scientific research performance in combination with their region environment.
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10 September 2023
A Correction to this paper has been published: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-023-04832-0
Notes
There are various methods to measure research quality, such as "the number of citations" and the "H-index," which are more scientific and accurate indicators. However, in most universities in China, the quality of faculty members' publications is generally assessed based on the journal ranking of their publications. From the perspective of overall performance evaluation for all university faculty members, it is more convenient to use journal ranking rather than "the number of citations" as it is an easier and more practical approach.
In this paper, high-impact journals are defined as those within the top 20% based on the journal impact factor, which follows the definition of the Chinese Academy of Sciences regarding Q1 and Q2 journals. The research conducted by the authors of this paper falls within the field of natural sciences. In China, the evaluation of the natural sciences field mostly adopts the classification standards of SCI journals set by the Chinese Academy of Sciences. The Chinese Academy of Sciences defines Q1 journals as those with a three-year average impact factor ranking within the top 5% and Q2 journals as those ranking between 6 and 20% in terms of impact factor. In line with the practices of most universities in China, this paper sets the requirement for the assessment of faculty members to publish papers in Q1 and Q2 journals. In this study, high-level journals were defined based on the requirement of being included in the top tier (Q1 and Q2) of journals indexed by the Chinese Academy of Sciences. These journals comprise some of the top and excellent Chinese science and engineering journals.
It is refers to China's official definition of "long-term exchange" for scholars, which indicates that a period of 6 months or longer is considered sufficient for acquiring specialized knowledge in a certain field according to the Chinese authorities.
This article did not study upward mobility in the group study because there is very little upward mobility data. Similarly, there is very little data on the horizontal mobility of researchers who have obtained the National Natural Science Foundation for Distinguished Young Scholars (Jieqing) among non-first-class universities.
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Jing, S., Xie, P., Yin, Q. et al. The effect of academic mobility on research performance: the case of China. Scientometrics 128, 5829–5850 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-023-04814-2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-023-04814-2