June 18, 2026 | News | Award

EAPS Open Science and Outreach Award for Population Studies to Aliakbar Akbaritabar and Tom Theile

Aliakbar Akbaritabar and Tom Theile received the EAPS Open Science and Outreach Award for Population Studies at the EPC 2026 in Bologna for their contributions to research on internal and international migration using large digital trace datasets.

Tom Theile and Aliakbar Akbaritabar received the the 2026 EAPS Open Science and Outreach Award for Population Studies. © EAPS

Central to their work is the Scholarly Migration Database, an open data infrastructure that reconstructs the national and international mobility of researchers based on global bibliometric data. The dataset encompasses harmonized bilateral migration flows of scholars from over 200 countries and territories spanning several decades, thereby enabling analyses of global scholarly mobility on a new scale.

A great news for the migration researchers worldwide and data enthusiasts is that in June 2026, the second major release of the Scholarly Migration Database is publicly shared. In addition to global bilateral migration flows and rates, it now includes the rates and flows data for about 2080 subnational regions worldwide, which is also disaggregated by gender and field of science. This working paper describes the details.

"By transforming complex publication metadata into accessible and reproducible metrics for migration, they open up entirely new empirical possibilities for studying the migration of highly skilled workers, global talent circulation, and the geography of knowledge production. By utilizing large-scale digital trace data, Theile and Akbaritabar are at the forefront of a new wave of research that is reshaping the way migration, and particularly the mobility of highly skilled workers, is measured and analyzed," the nomination letter states.

The database adheres to the FAIR principles—the data is findable, accessible, interoperable, and reusable—and is fully open to the scientific community. This includes transparent documentation and reproducible workflows.

In addition to their research, Theile and Akbaritabar are deeply committed to promoting the next generation of scientists. As part of the International Max Planck Research School for Population, Health, and Data Science (IMPRS-PHDS), they organize annual, free, worldwide courses that each attract more than 100 participants, including many from lower-income countries. They also regularly teach and mentor students at the European Doctoral School of Demography (EDSD).

The EAPS Open Science and Outreach Award for Population Studies recognizes outstanding contributions to "open science," including transparency and reproducibility in research, as well as data accessibility. The award also recognizes special achievements in communicating and disseminating the scope, implications, and results of population studies to audiences both within and outside the scientific community.