The relationship between prior international collaboration and international mobility: Global patterns across regions and income groups

Abstract In the global scientific landscape, international collaboration has become closely associated with researcher mobility. Using bibliometric data from over 42 million publications (1990–2020), this study provides a global analysis of the relationship between prior international collaboration and researcher international mobility. Researchers with prior international collaboration generally exhibit higher international mobility rates. This pattern is consistent across most countries. The difference in mobility rates between researchers with and without prior international collaboration is especially pronounced in countries such as Japan, Russia, China, and Brazil, while it is moderate in many European countries and North America. Additionally, researchers exhibit higher mobility rates toward countries with which they have previously collaborated. Regional and income-level analyses reveal pronounced asymmetries: Resource-rich countries attract substantial inflows regardless of collaboration history with these countries, whereas Low-income countries experience limited inflows, with incoming mobility occurring almost exclusively among researchers who have previously collaborated with these countries. Overall, our findings highlight the complex patterns between prior international collaboration and international mobility, with the strongest associations observed in flows between regions and from High-income to Low-income countries.