Researchers’ Mobility, Productivity and Impact: Case of Top Producing Authors in Seven Disciplines

The purpose of this study was to examine whether scientific mobility, either between countries or between affiliations has an effect on researchers’ productivity and impact. In order to investigate this issue, we examined the relationships between the number of institutional affiliations and countries of the top 100 authors in seven disciplines. The selected authors’ profiles contained the number of affiliations and countries each author is assigned. We studied the number of affiliations and countries and compared them to three bibliometric indicators: the number of publications in international, peer-reviewed journals, h-index and Field Weighted Citations Impact. Our findings show that although there are differences in the relationship between mobility, productivity and impact between disciplines, mobility between at least two affiliations has an overall positive effect on both output and impact while mobility between countries does not. Therefore, in most disciplines positive impact and productivity effects are tracked in affiliation mobility within a single country. © 2015, Springer Science+Business Media New York.