Publications

Abstract: Scientific mobility plays a pivotal role in shaping individual research careers and enhancing national innovation capacity by enabling knowledge exchange, fostering international collaborations, and providing access to leading research environments. Studying international mobility patterns of researchers from developing countries offers vital insights into strengthening domestic scientific ecosystems, addressing talent migration, and promoting global integration. In this study, we analyze the international mobility of India-affiliated researchers by reconstructing longitudinal affiliation trajectories from the OpenAlex database. We assembled longitudinal affiliation histories for 157,471 India-affiliated researchers and categorized them into distinct mobility pathways: immobile, returnees, and those who settled abroad after initially moving to the United States, European Union, or other high-income countries. Our analysis reveals that 28% of Indian researchers who started their careers in India experience at least one international move, yet more than 73% never return, highlighting a persistent pattern of brain drain. Notably, internationally mobile researchers predominantly originate from premier Indian institutions. These findings underscore the challenges of retaining top talent domestically and point to the urgent need for policies that incentivize return migration and strengthen domestic research infrastructure to leverage the expertise of globally trained scientists. Matched pair analyses demonstrate that international mobility is associated with lasting benefits such as a sustained increase in citation impact, while publication rates generally realign with those of immobile peers. Mobility also substantially enhances international collaboration: the share of foreign co-authors increases from a 52% baseline among immobile researchers to 83–87% at the time of transition abroad, and remains elevated among returnees, who retain a long-term collaboration premium of 32–40 percentage points across research disciplines. Notably, returnees maintain global networks, serving as critical bridges connecting Indian science with global research systems. Further, we find that our results are robust across all major research disciplines, demonstrating consistent patterns of mobility, citation impact, and international collaboration regardless of the field of study. Overall, our study underscores the dual role of scientific mobility as both a driver of scientific excellence and international engagement, and as an ongoing challenge for developing nations seeking to reintegrate returning talent.