Study On The Phenomenon Of Highly-cited Scientists’ Migration And Agglomeration

With the development of globalization, scientific elites become the global resource. Governments and all kinds of higher education institutions have launched a fierce talent competition. The phenomenon of scientific elites’ migration and agglomeration has been widely noted by policy makers and scholars both at home and abroad. This study adopts curriculum vitae (CV) analysis and questionnaire approaches to investigate these scientists’ migration trends and agglomeration features. The CVs of2430highly-cited scientists were collected and systematically analyzed, while308questionnaire were returned and analyzed.The data analysis shows that:scientific elites tend to migrate internationally at different career stages. In the process of international migration, scientific elites tend to migrate and agglomerate in the USA at their early career stages, namely during their doctoral studies and first academic posts. These scientific elites tend to move from USA to other innovative countries in later years. Work characteristic is the most important factors for them to migrate to and agglomerate to the USA.In the process of institutional migration, scientific elites tend to agglomerate in top universities. From the empirical analysis result, these universities are mainly world-class universities ranked in the top100of Academic Ranking of World Universities, Shanghai Jiao Tong University. Scientific elites tend to migrate and agglomerate in universities top ranked1-100in ARWU at their doctoral studies, and they tend to migrate from these universities to other institutions after obtaining their doctoral degrees, then they tend to migrate to these universities in later years; as it is more important for them to cumulative advantage in these universities.In order to understand motivations and causes for migration, this study adopts case studies to analyze the pattern and reasons of scientific elites’ migration in Hong Kong, Taiwan and Saudi Arabia. The case studies shows that:the government’s investment in scientific research is a prerequisite for agglomerating scientific elites, the world-class universities is the most important platform, and the appropriate policy target can accelerate scientific elites’ agglomeration. Based on the analysis, the research suggested that it is necessary for China to invest, to develop world-class universities and to draft reasonable policy target for attracting scientific elites.Finally, this study draws conclusion that scientific elites can migrate from the USA to other countries. It is the world-class universities that agglomerate scientific elites. The significance of this study includes that it discovers the new characteristics of scientific elites’ migration and agglomeration to the USA, and the academic ranking of world universities is used to verify the characteristic of the scientific elites’ agglomeration to universities.