Mobility, Networks and Excellence

Better knowledge of what influences researchers’ mobility and how this mobility affects the research community is pivotal, particularly in the globalised society of today. One indicator of the universities’ high degree of globalisation is the fact that three of the five universities that supply most doctoral students to American PhD programmes are now in countries other than the US.1 We are seeing an analogous trend in research organisation. Research groups are increasingly global in composition, and co-authored articles are increasingly written by people located at different universities and in different countries.2 In this globalised world, it is more and more important for Swedish research institutions to establish stable and close relationships with the leading research universities in the world. This does not happen spontaneously; it requires purposeful and long-term efforts. Researchers’ mobility is a crucial ingredient in this. When a researcher moves from one department to another, a network link between the two departments is created. Such network links are used to establish research collaboration, spread information about suitable and recruitable researchers and so forth. To enhance the Swedish research community’s productivity and creativity, providing financial support for mobility in general is not enough. There must be support focusing on the most productive and creative environments in the world, and a high degree of permanence in the links set up (more on this below). The type of mobility I focus on here is, first, temporary visits at universities and research institutes outside Sweden — postdoctoral visits, 93333-1_T_v1_RJ_1_Trimboxes_ipp Page 175 31-Mar-15