Researcher geographic mobility and publication productivity: an investigation into individual and institutional characteristics and the roles of academicians

This paper investigates the within country geographic mobility of researcher from their graduating universities and its relationship with publication productivity, paying special attention to the roles of Academicians, a member of the Chinese Academy of Science or Engineering. Various individual and institutional characteristics of researchers in environmental science and engineering in China and their publication productivity are collected and analyzed. We find that researcher geographic mobility from graduating institutions is generally associated with individual traits such as academic rank and age, and institutional characteristics such as school ranking and location. Researchers moving further away from their graduating institutions are generally associated with less productivity. The negative association can be explained by the fact that a significant portion of researchers stay within the same university where they received their highest degree; and these researchers are more productive than their peers who are hired from external institutions. Having an Academician in an institution is shown to be positively related to the likelihood of same university hires, and meanwhile positively related to higher publication productivity.