The influence of scientific mobility on the direction of research collaboration

Highly skilled return migrants contribute to the establishment of sustainable ties between the home and host system. This phenomenon offsets some of the costs implied by the theories on brain drain and return brain drain. This paper studies how the scientific social capital which Argentinean researchers built up during the time spent in foreign research systems influences their collaboration behavior upon return. Not only does it confirm the expectation that having foreign work experience is positively correlated to the propensity to collaborate internationally, but it also shows that researchers collaborate to a higher degree with their former host system. The latter is an effect of scientific social capital, which is independent of scientific human capital. Another central finding is that the impact of articles published by returnees is considerably higher than that of the average Argentinean paper. This effect wears off over time.