Internationally mobile scientists as knowledge transmitters: A lexical‐based approach to detect knowledge transfer

Valeria Aman

Journal of the Association for Information Science & Technology, 2022, vol. 73, issue 10, 1418-1431

Abstract: This paper explores the knowledge transfer of internationally mobile scientists. It builds upon previous work on the development of methods for detecting the knowledge transfer of German scientists. Using abstract terms of publications covered in Scopus, this paper proposes a lexical‐based approach to identify knowledge transmitters. These scientists are characterized by acquiring knowledge from their co‐workers during their international stay and transferring it upon return to German co‐workers. Knowledge is operationalized as the co‐occurrence of rarely used abstract terms. Knowledge transfer is expressed as the diffusion of these term combinations in co‐authorship networks. The method developed was validated by contacting the bibliometrically identified knowledge transmitters and asking them what they believe they learned during their stay abroad. A control group of internationally mobile scientists without traceable knowledge transfer was similarly asked to report on their knowledge acquisition. The findings suggest that bibliometric data are capable of detecting knowledge transmitters among German scientists who were internationally mobile. The juxtaposition of the responses on their perceived knowledge acquisition and the bibliometrically identified lexical terms shows that the method proposed is well suited to studying the knowledge transfer of internationally mobile scientists. The strength of the method is its simplicity and high precision.

Date: 2022
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://doi.org/10.1002/asi.24641

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:bla:jinfst:v:73:y:2022:i:10:p:1418-1431

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.blackwell ... bs.asp?ref=2330-1635

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Journal of the Association for Information Science & Technology from Association for Information Science & Technology
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Wiley Content Delivery ().