How to Maintain Sustainable Research Productivity: From Talents Mobility Perspective

Maintaining sustainable progress in knowledge and technology is essential in building a sustainable society. The transnational or transregional mobility of talents is one of the important channels for the flow and sustainability of knowledge and technology. Based on the social network theory, we attempt to investigate whether scholars’ mobility experience will effectively improve their future scientific research productivity. Empirical studies were conducted based on the academic curriculum vitae of faculties in a leading research university in China from 2008 to 2023. The results suggest that the mobility experience of scholars does not have a significant influence on the total number and quality of papers when we consider both domestic and international publications due to diversified publication channels in the social science disciplines. However, in terms of the number of papers published in international journals and international collaborations, the existence of mobility experiences in their past education or working experience has a significant positive impact on scholars’ later research productivity. In addition, scholars flowing through joint training programs at their doctoral phase tend to produce more co-authored papers. This research provides a reference for the wellbeing and sustainable productivity of university scholars, which is essential in higher education and social environments, and provides universities in developing countries with inspiration for building a sustainable academic talent flow system. It is important to note that this empirical study mainly focuses on researchers and publications in the social sciences, and the behavioral pattern and impact on research outputs might be different for scholars in the natural science disciplines. Due to the limitations with regard to data acquisition, this paper has not further discussed building an international academic network, which needs more in-depth research in the future.