Immigration enhanced academic productivity at Lund – Study

The influx of Asian academics to Lund University following the liberalisation of Swedish work migration rules in 2008 led to an increase in the publication output of the researchers who were working at departments receiving many of the incoming researchers, according to a new study by a PhD candidate.

In 2001, just over 4,000 researchers in Swedish academia were born outside Sweden, corresponding to about 21% of all academic researchers at that time. In 2011, the number of foreign-born researchers had doubled to more than 8,000, or almost 30% of Swedish academia.

“One effect of the inflow of Asian scientists was that Lund scientists who already were productive increased their academic production significantly,” PhD candidate John Källström said.

This is the conclusion of his dissertation, Mobility in Science, which investigates the internationalisation of universities and its impact upon knowledge production.

The dissertation is composed of three empirical studies: “The impact of immigration on scientists’ productivity: Evidence from a Swedish policy reform”; “Does mobility across universities raise scientific productivity?” and “On the social origin of the scientists: How intergenerational (im-)mobility shapes science”.

The latter investigates the social background of PhD graduates, suggesting that parents’ characteristics are essential determinants for obtaining a PhD-level education, notably the outcome if one parent also holds a PhD degree.

“That internationally mobile researchers are more productive has been demonstrated in earlier research,” Källström told Universitetsläraren, the journal for the Swedish Association for University Teachers and Researchers (SULF). “What interests me in my dissertation is how this immigration is having an effect upon Swedish researchers.”

Källström’s dissertation stems from his work on a Lund University research project examining whether mobility across universities raises scientific productivity. In a joint article, Källström, Olof Ejermo and Claudio Fassio said that using a highly comprehensive new dataset on Swedish researchers, they have investigated the effects of inter-university mobility on researcher productivity.

“Our study suggests substantial gains from mobility on scientific output. We find that mobility induces a long-lasting increase in a researcher’s publications by 29% and citations by 50%.

“Moreover, we analyse the factors that are likely to have an impact on the overall effect of mobility: the interaction of mobility and promotion, the importance of the status of the destination university, as well as the role of the specific disciplinary field of mobile researchers.”

The empirical analysis addressed selection using inverse probability treatment censoring weights, they said.

The Lund research suggests substantial gains from mobility on scientific output. The authors said mobility effects are not explained by promotions taking place jointly with a move. Positive effects are found among individuals who move between universities and not for those who move to or from university colleges.

Moreover, the researchers found that the positive effect of moving only applied to researchers in medicine, natural sciences and engineering, and technology, with no effect in the social sciences and the humanities.

Star researchers?

Källström said his dissertation demonstrated that migration in the knowledge sector has a positive effect on academic production and that “the 2008 reform hence was a stroke of luck”.

He said the policy in many countries is to recruit ’star researchers’, but the Swedish experience found that this is not always the right path to choose.

“Half of the Asiatic researchers coming here were doctoral students who stayed behind upon graduation. Even if they are not ’star researchers’, they are having a positive effect on knowledge production,” he said.