Game of Brains: Examining Researcher Brain Gain and Brain Drain and Research University Policy

in Higher Education Policy (2023), 36

We leverage a rich bibliometric dataset on Taiwanese academia to explore scientific migration patterns. We investigate the movement and productivity of 21,051 highly active researchers who served in ... [more ▼]

We leverage a rich bibliometric dataset on Taiwanese academia to explore scientific migration patterns. We investigate the movement and productivity of 21,051 highly active researchers who served in Taiwanese higher education institutions based on 30 years’ worth of publication and affiliation records from 1991 to 2020. The analysis shows evidence of brain drain in Taiwan since the 2010s, with the U.S. being both the biggest source of inbound researchers to Taiwan and top destination for researchers emigrating from Taiwan. China comes a close second to the U.S. as the top destination for outbound scholars. We also study how Taiwan’s universities recruited talent after the country adopted the 2005 excellence initiative and confirm the converging number of scholars recruited by World Class Universities (WCUs) and non-WCUs as WCUs, surprisingly, exhibit a dramatic decrease in new recruits. Our evidence uncovers that inbound scholars, after their move, are more productive than non-mobile colleagues; however, this effect declines over time. We discuss implications for the study of excellence initiatives and mechanisms of talent circulation that greatly impact research production and research university development. [less ▲]