Arbeitsbereich

Migration und Mobilität

Auf einen Blick Projekte Publikationen Team

Projekt

Trends and Disparities in Patterns of Scientific Knowledge Production

Aliakbar Akbaritabar, Diego Alburez-Gutierrez, Andres Castro (MPIDR / Computational Social Sciences and Humanities Programme, Barcelona Supercomputing Center, Spanien); in Zusammenarbeit mit Vincent Larivière (University of Montreal, Kanada), Cassidy R. Sugimoto (Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, Vereinigte Staaten), Flaminio Squazzoni (Università degli Studi di Milano, Italien), Dimity M. Stephen (German Centre for Higher Education Research and Science Studies GmbH, Hannover, Deutschland), Dehua Gao (Shandong Technology and Business University, China), José Ignacio Carrasco Armijo (University of Oxford, Vereinigtes Königreich von Großbritannien und Nordirland), Marie Godin (University of Leicester, Vereinigtes Königreich von Großbritannien und Nordirland), Carlos Vargas-Silva (University of Oxford, Vereinigtes Königreich von Großbritannien und Nordirland)

Ausführliche Beschreibung

The ongoing digitization of data across sectors has led to a rapid accumulation of scientific information and metadata, much of which are now accessible through publicly available platforms as well as proprietary, licensed databases. Bibliometric data, which are information extracted from scientific publications, are considered a source of digital trace data reflecting scientists’ behavior. Thus, these data can be used to study inequalities in patterns of scientific production worldwide. They can also be used to determine which geographical regions are fairly represented, underrepresented, or overrepresented in scientific studies (Carrasco et al., 2025).

The use of bibliometric data in demographic research can roughly be divided into two classes. One class of research looks at the populations of scholars and uses bibliometric data to study population composition and dynamics across different national science systems, and over time, including disparities by gender or academic age. A second class of studies repurposes bibliometric data and treats them similarly to digital traces in order to study, for example, scholars’ mobility and migration. These data are often combined with other sources such as geospatial data, survey data, and administrative data to provide more context for interpreting the scientists’ behavior.

In one part of this project, we study global trends in scientific knowledge production in the form of scientific publications. We investigate the structure of scientific collaboration worldwide and how it varies in different national contexts and among fields of science. In addition, we investigate scientists’ behavior with respect to the following questions: (i) How do they select research questions? (ii) With whom do they collaborate? (iii) How do they react to national or global incentives in research assessment exercises? (iv) Do these national research assessments consider the mobility history of scholars? (v) Do scholars have specific tendencies in how they present their work depending on whether the research focus is on the Global North or the Global South? (vi) Are there certain geographical regions that are studied more often in scientific publications?

Below we highlighted some of our key findings from this line of research and future directions. In one study, we used OpenAlex data from 1960–2024 to examine whether publications differ in how they mention the regions they focus on. We found that publications studying the Global North are less likely to mention the region, while studies on the Global South are much more likely to do so (Castro Torres, 2025). This research further assessed and confirmed the trends shown in our prior study using Scopus data (Castro Torres and Alburez-Gutierrez, 2022).

In a related study, we focused on the migration literature and found that richer countries, and especially those that allocated a higher share of gross domestic product to research (e.g., countries in North America and the Global North), were more likely to be well represented in the migration literature. This representation correlated positively to the size of a country’s immigrant or emigrant population.

Going forward, we will further integrate the study of scientific production into the study of high-skilled migration. For instance, one step in this direction might be to explore how national research assessments of scientific production could consider the mobility histories of scholars (Akbaritabar et al., 2026).

Benennungspraktiken bei der Erwähnung des geografischen Schwerpunkts im Titel wissenschaftlicher Veröffentlichungen

Während sich etwa 60 % der Artikel auf Europa und Nordamerika konzentrieren (links), werden diese Regionen nur in 40 % der Artikel im Titel erwähnt (rechts). Bei den anderen Regionen der Welt verhält es sich umgekehrt. Die Abbildung zeigt die Verteilung der Schwerpunktregion der Artikel in der Analysestichprobe (links) und die Lokalisierungsrate nach Studienregion (rechts), 1996 bis 2020 (n = 560.893). Autoren aus dem globalen Süden geben den geografischen Schwerpunkt ihrer Artikel deutlich häufiger an. © Based on the paper by Castro Torres, A. F., & Alburez-Gutierrez, D. (2022). North and South: Naming practices and the hidden dimension of global disparities in knowledge production. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 119(10), e2119373119

Die regionale Konzentration von Wissenschaft und wissenschaftlicher Zusammenarbeit

Während Einrichtungen in Nord-, Mittel- und Südamerika hauptsächlich mit anderen Einrichtungen innerhalb derselben Region zusammenarbeiten, kooperieren Europa, Afrika und Ozeanien miteinander und zeigen einen viel stärkeren Trend zur internationalisierten Zusammenarbeit im Bereich der Hochschulstudien. Die Abbildung zeigt die Verteilung der Hochschuleinrichtungen aus verschiedenen Kontinenten (linke Spalte der beiden Tafeln) im Vergleich zu ihrer Mitgliedschaft in 36 Hochschulnetzwerken. Die rechte Spalte der beiden Tafeln zeigt die zusammenhängenden Untergruppen (d. h. Gemeinschaften), die wir in ihrem Kooperationsnetzwerk identifiziert haben. Die Ko-Autorenschaft von Veröffentlichungen wird in ein Netzwerk umgewandelt, in dem Autoren einer Einrichtung mit Autoren einer anderen Einrichtung zusammenarbeiten (die linke Spalte zeigt die Größe der Gemeinschaften auf der Grundlage der Anzahl der Einrichtungen, die rechte Spalte zeigt die Produktivität auf der Grundlage der Anzahl der Veröffentlichungen). © Based on the paper by Akbaritabar, A., & Barbato, G. An internationalised Europe and regionally focused Americas: A network analysis of higher education studies. European Journal of Education, 56(2), 219–234.

Publikationen

Akbaritabar, A.; Castro Torres, A. F.; Zagheni, E.:

Internationally mobile researchers contribute to scientific production far beyond their share in the population

MPIDR Working Paper WP-2026-009. (2026)    

Carrasco Armijo, J. I.; Akbaritabar, A.; Godin, M.; Vargas-Silva, C.:

Prioritizing global equity in migration research

Humanities and Social Sciences Communications 13:16, 1–28. (2026)    

Castro Torres, A. F.; Esposito, M.; Akbaritabar, A.:

Global patterns of epistemic hierarchy and dependency in science

Development and Change. accepted. (2026)    

Castro Torres, A. F.; Giner-Miguelez, J.; Crosas, M.:

When AI meets science: research diversity, interdisciplinarity, visibility, and retractions across disciplines in a global surge

arXiv e-prints 2605.06033. unpublished. (2026)    

Zhou, H.; Akbaritabar, A.; Sun, M.; Zagheni, E.; Nunes Amaral, L. A.:

A natural experiment reveals the impact of geopolitical shocks on the trajectory of a nation’s scientific enterprise

MPIDR Working Paper WP-2026-026. (2026)    

Akbaritabar, A.; Carrasco Armijo, J. I.; Anastasiadou, A.:

Gender dynamics in international migration and social networks

MPIDR Working Paper WP-2025-004. (2025)    

Castro Torres, A. F.; Akbaritabar, A.:

The hegemonic use of linear models in quantitative social sciences

Bulletin of Sociological Methodology 167:1, 78–95. (2025)    

Coimbra Vieira, C.; Chechik, E.; Di Césare, V.:

Beyond sentiment analysis with ChatGPT: classifying authors' perspectives on Russian topics

In: 20th International Conference on Scientometrics and Informetrics, ISSI 2025: June 23-27, 2025, Yerevan, Armenia; proceedings: volume 2, 1997–2003. Yerevan: ISSI. (2025)    

Akbaritabar, A.:

Thinking spatially in computational social science: commentary on Yong-Yeol Ahn (2021): “Representation learning for computational imagination”

EPJ Data Science 13:14, 1–12. (2024)    

Akbaritabar, A.; Castro Torres, A. F.; Larivière, V.:

A global perspective on social stratification in science

Humanities and Social Sciences Communications 11:914, 1–10. (2024)    

Basellini, U.:

Open science practices in demographic research: an appraisal

Demographic Research 50:43, 1265–1280. (2024)    

Castro Torres, A. F.; Akbaritabar, A.:

The use of linear models in quantitative research

Quantitative Science Studies 5:2, 426–446. (2024)    

Akbaritabar, A.:

Scientific collaboration networks in the interdisciplinary field of biodiversity in central Germany

In: 19th International Conference on Scientometrics and Informetrics, ISSI 2023: 2-5 July 2023, Indiana University, Bloomington, IN, USA; proceedings: volume 1, 19–41. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University. (2023)    

Akbaritabar, A.; Castro Torres, A. F.; Larivière, V.:

A global perspective on the social structure of science

MPIDR Working Paper WP-2023-029. (2023)    

Nur, A. A.; Akbaritabar, A.; Vignau Loria, M.; Coolman, N.; Fan, X.; Curran, S.:

Bibliometric analysis of published literature on the determinants of family planning

MPIDR Working Paper WP-2023-027. (2023)    

Castro Torres, A. F.; Akbaritabar, A.:

Methodological monotheism across fields of science in contemporary quantitative research

arXiv e-prints 2208.05373. unpublished. (2022)    

Castro Torres, A. F.; Alburez-Gutierrez, D.:

North and South: naming practices and the hidden dimension of global disparities in knowledge production

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 119:10, e2119373119–e2119373119. (2022)    

Piolatto, M.; Bianchi, F.; Rota, M.; Marengoni, A.; Akbaritabar, A.; Squazzoni, F.:

The effect of social relationships on cognitive decline in older adults: an updated systematic review and meta-analysis of longitudinal cohort studies

BMC Public Health 22:278, 1–14. (2022)    

Akbaritabar, A.:

A quantitative view of the structure of institutional scientific collaborations using the example of Berlin

Quantitative Science Studies 2:2, 753–777. (2021)    

Akbaritabar, A.; Barbato, G.:

An internationalised Europe and regionally focused Americas: a network analysis of higher education studies

European Journal of Education 56:2, 219–234. (2021)    

Akbaritabar, A.; Bravo, G.; Squazzoni, F.:

The impact of a national research assessment on the publications of sociologists in Italy

Science and Public Policy 48:5, 662–678. (2021)    

Castro Torres, A. F.; Alburez-Gutierrez, D.:

North and South: naming practices and the hidden dimension of global disparities in knowledge production

MPIDR Working Paper WP-2021-014. (2021)