Laboratory
Migration and Mobility
At a Glance
Projects
Publications
Team
Project
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, Spain); in Collaboration with Vincent Larivière (University of Montreal, Canada), Cassidy R. Sugimoto (Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, USA), Flaminio Squazzoni (Università degli Studi di Milano, Italy), Dimity M. Stephen (German Centre for Higher Education Research and Science Studies GmbH, Hannover, Germany), Dehua Gao (Shandong Technology and Business University, China), José Ignacio Carrasco Armijo (University of Oxford, United Kingdom), Marie Godin (University of Leicester, United Kingdom), Carlos Vargas-Silva (University of Oxford, United Kingdom)
Detailed Description
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).
Naming practices in mentioning the geographic location of focus in the title of scientific publications
While about 60% of articles have a focus on Europe and North America (left) only 40% of articles mention these regions in their title (right). The reverse is the case for other regions of the world. The figure shows the distribution of the region of focus of articles in the analytical sample (Left) and localization rate by region of study (Right), 1996 to 2020 (n = 560,893). Authors from the Global South have a much higher tendency to reveal the geographic focus of their articles. © 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
The regional concentration of science and scientific collaborations
While institutions in Americas are collaborating mainly with other institutions inside the same region, Europe, Africa, and Oceania are collaborating with each other and show a much higher trend of internationalized collaboration in the area of Higher Education studies. The figure shows the distribution of Higher Education (HE) studies institutions from different continents (left column of both panels) versus their membership in 36 HE studies network. Right column of both panels show the cohesive subgroups (i.e., communities) that we have identified their collaboration network. Co-authoring of publications is converted into a network where authors form one institution collaborate with authors from another institution (the left panel shows size of communities based on number of institutions, the right panel shows the productivity based on number of publications). © 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.
Culture, Education and Science, Projections and Forecasting, Statistics and Mathematics
Europe, Germany, Italy, World
Publications
Akbaritabar, A.; Carrasco Armijo, J. I.; Anastasiadou, A.:
In: Handbook on international migration and social networks, 93–105. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar Publishing. (2026)
Akbaritabar, A.; Castro Torres, A. F.; Zagheni, E.:
MPIDR Working Paper WP-2026-009. (2026)
Carrasco Armijo, J. I.; Akbaritabar, A.; Godin, M.; Vargas-Silva, C.:
Humanities and Social Sciences Communications 13:16, 1–28. (2026)
Castro Torres, A. F.; Esposito, M.; Akbaritabar, A.:
Development and Change. accepted. (2026)
Castro Torres, A. F.; Giner-Miguelez, J.; Crosas, M.:
arXiv e-prints 2605.06033. unpublished. (2026)
Zhou, H.; Akbaritabar, A.; Sun, M.; Zagheni, E.; Nunes Amaral, L. A.:
MPIDR Working Paper WP-2026-026. (2026)
Akbaritabar, A.; Carrasco Armijo, J. I.; Anastasiadou, A.:
MPIDR Working Paper WP-2025-004. (2025)
Castro Torres, A. F.:
Social Currents 12:2, 103–110. (2025)
Castro Torres, A. F.; Akbaritabar, A.:
Bulletin of Sociological Methodology 167:1, 78–95. (2025)
Coimbra Vieira, C.; Chechik, E.; Di Césare, V.:
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.:
EPJ Data Science 13:14, 1–12. (2024)
Akbaritabar, A.; Castro Torres, A. F.; Larivière, V.:
Humanities and Social Sciences Communications 11:914, 1–10. (2024)
Akbaritabar, A.; Rubin, B. P.:
Journal of the History of the Neurosciences 33:4, 397–418. (2024)
Basellini, U.:
Demographic Research 50:43, 1265–1280. (2024)
Castro Torres, A. F.; Akbaritabar, A.:
Quantitative Science Studies 5:2, 426–446. (2024)
Abdi Nur, A.; Akbaritabar, A.; Vignau Loria, M.; Coolman, N.; Fan, X.; Curran, S.:
MPIDR Working Paper WP-2023-027. (2023)
Akbaritabar, A.:
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.:
MPIDR Working Paper WP-2023-029. (2023)
Akbaritabar, A.; Stephen, D.; Squazzoni, F.:
Journal of Informetrics 16:2, 101258–101258. (2022)
Castro Torres, A. F.; Akbaritabar, A.:
arXiv e-prints 2208.05373. unpublished. (2022)
Castro Torres, A. F.; Alburez-Gutierrez, D.:
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 119:10, e2119373119–e2119373119. (2022)
Gao, D.; Akbaritabar, A.:
Review of Managerial Science 16:2, 521–550. (2022)
Piolatto, M.; Bianchi, F.; Rota, M.; Marengoni, A.; Akbaritabar, A.; Squazzoni, F.:
BMC Public Health 22:278, 1–14. (2022)
Akbaritabar, A.:
Quantitative Science Studies 2:2, 753–777. (2021)
Akbaritabar, A.; Barbato, G.:
European Journal of Education 56:2, 219–234. (2021)
Akbaritabar, A.; Bravo, G.; Squazzoni, F.:
Science and Public Policy 48:5, 662–678. (2021)
Castro Torres, A. F.; Alburez-Gutierrez, D.:
MPIDR Working Paper WP-2021-014. (2021)