Cancer Research Immigrants to the Five Nordic Countries: Where Are They From, and What Contribution Do They Make?

Family names can indicate the national heritage of researchers, and personal names their sex. We applied the Origins database to characterise cancer researchers in the five Nordic countries through their papers in the Web of Science in six years, 2009-10, 2017-18 and 2025-26. Most names were Nordic but increasing numbers were characteristic of other countries in western Europe, or elsewhere. Non-Europeans increased their overall presence from 8% to 14%; the largest group were Muslims, mainly Iranians, followed by East Asians, mostly Mandarin Chinese. Sweden was the most welcoming to these non-European migrants; Iceland and Denmark less so. Females improved their presence in all five countries, especially in Denmark. It was over 50% in 2025-26 in all nations except Iceland. However, female non-European immigrants fared 33% worse than females with European heritage. We determined the percentages of credit for the five-year citations received for each paper in 2009-10 and 2017-18 for each author on a new criterion. We divided the citation score between the authors based on their position and unrelated Canadian fellowship data. The country ranking in cites per person was Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Finland and Iceland. Males overall were cited 30% more than females, but South Asian and Iberian females were cited slightly more than males. For most countries and heritage groups, Nordic authors were the most cited (Danes, 8.7 cites per person, followed by Swedes at 7.5). Some migrant groups were cited more, such as Muslims and Blacks in Finland, and the British in Norway and Iceland.