Mobility and its effect on scientific recognition. A prosopographic analysis of Swiss biologists

Abstract

This article aims at understanding the biographical dynamics of mobility—academic, institutional, geographic, and disciplinary—and its effect on scientific recognition. We draw on a comprehensive data collection on career progression, publications, and funding for all biology professors in Switzerland active between 2008 and 2020. Data sources combine CV information, data from the Web of Science and the Swiss National Science Foundation. Thanks to multiple-sequence analysis, we are able to consider six career types and their effect on scientific recognition. Our main finding is that different combinations of mobility have different effects on scientific recognition. Disciplinary mobility, however, has a very limited effect on shaping scientific careers, although we also observe a positive effect of disciplinary mobility in cases when it occurs early in the career. Professors who became interdisciplinary very early are also those who are the youngest at tenure and who benefit from the highest level of citations when considering their entire career. Because the effects of mobility on career success depend on specific combinations of academic, geographic, institutional, and disciplinary mobility, as well as ascriptive characteristics, we argue that biographical process should be considered in studies on scientific careers.