Scientific mobility of Early Career Researchers in Spain and The Netherlands through their publications

This paper presents an exploratory analysis of different typologies of researchers according to their traceable mobility using scientific publications covered in the Web of Science (WoS). We compare two populations of researchers, of the same 'scientific age', based in Spain and The Netherlands. To establish reasonable comparisons between researchers based in The Netherlands and Spain, we must first identify similar groups of researchers in each country. We only consider 'trusted' direct linkages between author and affiliation as reported in scientific publications and recorded by WoS. We establish three different study groups: Mobile versus non-mobile researchers, returned versus not returned researchers and, single versus multiple affiliations. We observe differences in the mobility patterns and their relation with production and citation impact between countries. Differences for each study group are found in the case of Spain but not as evident for The Netherlands. We conclude remarking the need to further analyse the institutional framework of each country to better understand how much do they influence research mobility and in what way.