The impact of foreign-born scientists and engineers on American nanoscience research

The impact of foreign-born

scientists and engineers on

American nanoscience research

James P. Walsh

Postdoctoral Scholar, University of Pennsylvania, Social Science and Policy Forum, 306I College

Hall, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA 19104; Email: [email protected].

This paper assesses the contribution of foreign-born scientists and engineers to nanoscienceinnovation. While studies have assessed immigrants’ general contributions to American scienceand engineering, less is known about their presence within emergent, cutting-edge, and multi-disciplinary fields. Multiple sources are utilized to determine the nativity of researchers withinnanotechnology, a platform technology with important implications for economic growth, industrialcompetitiveness, and numerous fields of scientific research. Specifically, it examines the authorsof the most highly-cited articles published in the period 1999–2009. Based on comparisons withthe prevalence of foreign-born in the scientific and engineering community and general popula-tion, the study’s findings reveal that researchers were disproportionally foreign-born, a trend thathas grown over time. Additionally, although over-represented among high-impact researchers,there were no significant differences between the institutional locations (academia versusindustry) and research activities (productivity and patterns of collaboration) of foreign and

native scientists and engineers.

Keywords: innovation; globalization; immigration; science and engineering;nanoscience and nanotechnology.

1. Introduction

For scholars, politicians, and laypersons alike immigrationremains a topic of substantive and perennial interest.Nowhere is this statement truer that in the USA today.In addition to questions of collective identity andnational security, much of the current academic andpolicy discourse focuses on the economic consequencesof large-scale migration. Facing the most extensiveeconomic crisis in recent memory, immigration has beendemonized as a social and economic burden, and alsolauded as a wellspring of innovation and creativity.While adherents to the former perspective point to thecrowding out of native workers in the labor market’slower rungs (Borjas 2007; Briggs 2001), proponents ofthe latter view cite the economic contributions—whetherinnovation, initiative, competitiveness, or entrepreneur-ship—of highly-skilled immigrants, specifically thosespecializing in fields related to science, technology, engin-eering and mathematics (STEM) (Saxenian 2006; Skeldon2009; Wadwha 2012).

Although scholarship has increasingly turned to theissue of highly-skilled migration, much remains to bedone. Academic research and policy debates have largelycentered on immigrants inhabiting the bottom of the oc-cupational skill hierarchy. Absent in such discussions is thefact that immigrants’ educational attainment and occupa-tional standing display a bimodal distribution, with theforeign-born over-represented at both ends of the skillspectrum (Cornelius and Espenshade 2001; Bhagwati2009). While the contributions of foreign-born scientistsand engineers can be traced back several centuries(Manning 2005), their importance has continued, andwill continue, to grow given the emergence of the contem-porary knowledge or information economy. Scientifictalent and technical expertise are now crucial for acountry’s development because economic growth hingesupon innovation. Unlike previous eras where industrialexpansion was limited by the availability of raw materialsand capital, at present the lack of access to highly-skilledlabor and human and intellectual capital is the primary

Science and Public Policy 42 (2015) pp. 107–120 doi:10.1093/scipol/sct084Advance Access published on 12 May 2014

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impediment to productivity and growth (Florida 2002;Hart 2007; Shachar 2006). Under such conditions it isheld that the mobility of elite scientists and researchersplays a decisive role in the diffusion and commercializationof knowledge, and has established new geographies oftalent, development, and innovation (Laudel 2005; Trippland Maier 2010).

Facing both demographic declines and a crisis in publiceducation, immigrants have provided a critical source ofhighly-skilled labor in the USA (Espenshade et al. 2001;National Academy of Sciences 2005). Foreign-born scien-tists and engineers constitute one of the fastest growingsegments of the labor market in North America andEurope. In the period 1970–2009 their share of theAmerican scientific and engineering labor force morethan trebled from 7.6% to 25.2% (National ScienceFoundation 2012). More than numerical growth, the avail-able evidence suggests that migrants have made excep-tional contributions to the American innovation system.Studies indicate that across several measures of scientificachievement, leading scientists and engineers are dispro-portionately foreign-born or foreign-educated (Stephanand Levin 2001). Additionally, more than one-third ofAmerican Nobel laureates are foreign-born, and one-quarter of the founders of technology and engineeringfirms established in the period 1995–2005 were non-natives (National Academy of Sciences 2005; Wadwhaet al. 2007).1 In addition to contributing skills andhuman capital, in the case of scientific research andtechnological innovation, highly-skilled migrants havebeen perceived as critical in catalyzing boundary-spanning relationships, establishing important patterns ofcross-pollination, and bridging and integrating disparateresearch communities (Saxenian 2002; Trippl and Maier2010). Specifically, it is argued that their language skills,cultural competencies, and networks of social and profes-sional ties figure prominently in mobilizing information,talent, and technical expertise, and establishing trans-national relationships and exchanges (Coe and Bunnell2003; Williams 2007).

Whether and how the foreign-born contribute to innov-ation can be debated. One issue, however, is clear. Moredata concerning the character and contributions of foreignand native-born scientists and engineers is needed.Specifically, numbers concerning highly-skilled migrationare scarce and underdeveloped. As the preceding suggests,while noteworthy surveys and studies exist, they havelargely been conducted along rigid disciplinary lines or inwell-established research fields and economic sectors.Consequently, few studies have assessed the input ofhighly-skilled immigrants within emergent, highlycomplex, and specialized fields. Specifically, no researchhas yet focused on their prevalence within the cutting-edge and inherently multidisciplinary field of nanotechnol-ogy—a field widely regarded as revolutionary in itsscientific, social, and economic implications. These

outcomes reflect the general opacity of the nanoscientificcommunity. As several observers have noted, knowledgeconcerning the character and demographic profile of thenanoscientific labor force remains tentative and impres-sionistic. According to the President’s Council ofAdvisors on Science and Technology, efforts to measureboth scientific productivity and workforce developmenthave been meager ‘inconsistent and decentralized’(President’s Council of Advisors on Science andTechnology 2012: 21).

In addition to enhancing social scientific understandingsof immigration and science and technology, better datacan contribute to better policy. Given that debates overimmigration often occur within a contentious and highlypoliticized environment, the dearth of reliable data mayproduce policy prescriptions that are misinformed andbased on anecdotal evidence or ideological disposition.

In an effort to open up new lines of inquiry and tran-scend the fog surrounding current discussions, this paperemploys an original dataset to gauge the contributions offoreign-born researchers to high-impact nanoscientific in-novation. To adjudicate the impact of foreign versusnative-born researchers, it examines one significantmetric of scientific achievement—research influence, asmeasured by citation frequency, and systematicallyexamines the nativity of the authors of the top 1% mosthighly-cited papers published in the period 1999–2009(n=1,373). In addition to providing a synoptic view ofthe national origins of leading nanoscientists, this popula-tion is further broken down according to institutional af-filiation, corresponding author status, field of research,number of authorships, number of co-authors, andpatterns of boundary-spanning collaborative activity,whether across institutions, disciplines, or countries andregions.

Understanding the character of the nanoscientific com-munity promises to contribute to studies of researchcapacity in this important area of investigation. Data onpublications is especially important given that, despiteemerging patterns of commercialization, nanotechnologyis strongly rooted in interdisciplinary basic research, withthe bulk of advances being carried out in universitysettings (Islam and Miyazaki 2010; Kostoff et al. 2007).Although academic research is a source of potential innov-ation and typically impacts industry in an indirect andcircuitous fashion, basic science provides the foundationfor commercial innovation and is vital to economic growthand competitiveness—trends uniquely applicable to infantor nascent industries like nanoscience (Di Gregorio andShane 2003; Gittleman and Kogut 2003; Zucker andDarby 1996).

This study’s results indicate that the foreign-born aresignificantly over-represented in the field of nanotechnol-ogy when compared to their prevalence within the scientificand engineering labor force and broader American popu-lation—trends that have, on average, grown over time.

108 . James P. Walsh

Additionally, while the foreign-born are slightly over-represented in the private sector, the institutional appor-tionment of researchers was roughly identical with the vastmajority of native and non-native researchers clustered inacademia. Similar outcomes were found for collaborativeactivity, and no significant differences in rates of interna-tional, interdisciplinary, or inter-institutional collabor-ation were displayed. Moreover, foreign-born researchersdominated the ranks of exceptional or ‘star’ scientists whoauthored multiple highly-cited articles, and arrived from54 countries with China and India constituting the leadingcountries of origin.

The remainder of this paper is divided as follows. Afterproviding a brief overview of nanotechnology’s signifi-cance as an object of inquiry in Section 2, the data andmethodological approach utilized in this study aredescribed in greater detail in Section 3. Section 4presents the results of this research. To determine theirsignificance, the proportion of foreign-born researchers iscompared against the stock of immigrants in the Americanscientific labor force and general population. Additionally,statistical tests were employed to test for interactionsbetween nativity and patterns of collaborative research.Section 5 offers a brief summary and discusses the impli-cations of this study’s findings and potential directions forfuture research.

2. Nanoscience and nanotechnology

The upper echelon of the American nanoscientific commu-nity constitutes this study’s population. This particularfocus was adopted given nanoscience’s implications forAmerican innovation and competitiveness, as well as, itsmultidisciplinary character.

In many respects nanotechnology provides a critical casefor assessing the contribution of the foreign-born to scien-tific and technological innovation. Nanotechnology is ascientific and technical domain that is still evolving, onethat promises to create novel materials and new systemsthat intervene in and re-engineer physical and biologicalproperties at the level of the molecular or the nanoscale.2

As a next generation general purpose technology with sig-nificant import for industrial sectors as diverse as: elec-tronics, semiconductors, agriculture, pharmaceuticals,defense, water treatment, energy, and manufacturing,both scholars and policy-makers have argued that thefield will produce the next industrial revolution, and willbe as important as the steam engine and internet in theextent of its transformative power (Michelson 2008;President’s Council of Advisors on Science andTechnology 2012; Roco 2002).

Many governments have approached nanotechnology asone of the leading technologies of the 21st century, andbelieve it will be a critical instrument and platform insecuring economic development, competitiveness, and

prosperity. Together the USA, China, Brazil, Russia,India, Japan, France, and the UK, among others, haveinvested billions in R&D, and several governments havegiven nanotechnology a privileged place in their industrialand science policies. China’s State Council has identifiednanotechnology as one of four priority areas in its long-term science and technology policy, and the Japanese gov-ernment has similarly labeled it a priority area in itsapproach to technological development (Guan and Ma2007; Parker and Appelbaum 2012; Huang and Wu2012). Since its adoption in 2000 the NationalNanotechnology Initiative (NNI) has been central in theAmerican government’s efforts to have a ‘catalytic andsubstantial’ (President’s Council of Advisors on Scienceand Technology 2012: 11) influence on the researchprofile of the American scientific community, andprovide the ‘infrastructure and tools to advance nanotech-nology’ (National Nanotechnology Initiative 2013: 20).With a budget of US$2.1 billion in 2012,3 the initiativehas targeted energy storage and production, advancedmanufacturing, computing and electronics, and biomedi-cine as key funding areas.

In addition to its consequences for economic growth andscience and technology policy, nanotechnology is notori-ous for its “radically cross disciplinary nature” (SeelyBrown 2012: xi). It is exceedingly difficult to define andinvolves an array of disparate fields, whether subdisciplinesin, inter alia, physics, chemistry, biology, materials science,mathematics, computer science, and mechanical and elec-trical engineering. In describing the field Harthorn andMohr (2012: 2) have noted:

Perhaps more than any other contemporary scientific field,nanotechnologies have been assembled through a kind of sci-

entific and technological bricolage, an amalgamation ofconjoint ideas and technologies, organized around no singledisciplinary community or intellectual site.

Consequently, this research displays significant implica-tions for both policy debates and studies of immigrants’consequences for innovation. First, given nanotechnol-ogy’s prospects for social and industrial transformation,the importance of constructing a profile of the criticalhuman agents in its development can hardly beoverestimated. Moreover, by assessing a uniquely intersti-tial field like nanoscience, this research promises to pushstudies of STEM-based migration into new terrain pos-itioned across existing disciplinary categories.

3. Data and methodology

To gauge the contributions of foreign-born scientists toAmerican nanoscience innovation this study constructeda novel dataset based on the nativity or country of birthof leading researchers. This process involved two stages:identifying the population of our study through bibliomet-ric methodologies, and determining their national origins.

The impact of foreign-born scientists and engineers on American nanoscience research . 109

Given the unprecedented scale and complexity of nano-technology—an endeavor that crosses settled conceptualand disciplinary distinctions—quantitative research on itsgrowth and developmental trajectory has routinely reliedon bibliometric analysis to effectively delimit the field(Guan and Ma 2007; Kostoff et al. 2007; Schummer2007; Walsh and Ridge 2012). Reflecting prior efforts toidentify legitimate nanoscientific scholarship, this researchrelies on an altered version of Kostoff’s widely acceptedBoolean search string (Kostoff et al. 2007).4 To track theemergence and development of nanotechnology-relatedpublications this study utilized Thompson Reuters Webof Science (WOS), an online database that covers the ISIScience Citation Index, and is widely regarded as theleading catalogue of prominent science and engineeringjournals. In particular, WOS provides a significant advan-tage in retrieving nanoscience publications. It has been de-veloped iteratively based on consultations with expertsfrom various science and engineering subfields, and,unlike more specialized indices, it aggregates multipledatabases and is designed to facilitate in-depth explorationof cross-disciplinary research. Most importantly, existingworks suggests it is extremely precise in returningnanoscience research (Kostoff et al. 2007; Mehta et al.2012). While extensive in its coverage many forms of in-formation cannot be easily extracted without specializedsoftware or advanced computational tools (Milanez et al.2013). In particular, data concerning author names andorder, citations, institutional affiliation, highly specializedsubfields, and patterns of collaboration need to bemanually coded—dynamics preventing more comprehen-sive analysis.

Additionally, while existing studies have provided anoverall view of nanoscience publications, this researchbegins with individual researchers as its unit of analysis,and attempts to account for differences in the visibility andinfluence of existing work. Specifically, this study’s targetpopulation is comprised of the authors of the top 1% mosthighly-cited nanotechnology papers published in peer-reviewed science and engineering journals in the period1999–2009,5 a period widely considered to mark nanotech-nology’s ascendance as a legitimate and cutting-edgeobject of inquiry.6 Drawing on existing studies of innov-ation, authorship of highly-cited research is taken as auseful indicator for identifying scientific elites and‘world-class’ research (Tijssen et al. 2002; cf. Hess andRothaermel 2012; Trippl and Maier 2010; Zuckerman1977).7 Determinations of the top percentile of citedpapers were determined annually to avoid bias towardsolder papers.

This selective focus was motivated by practical and sub-stantive considerations. First, was the immense size of thepotential universe of cases. During the 11 years covered inthis study, the number of American scientists and engin-eers engaged in nanoscience research grew sevenfold, re-sulting in approximately 36,000 peer-reviewed journal

articles. Based on the search string employed in thisstudy the number of nanoscience articles with at leastone author affiliated with an American institution grewfrom roughly 900 to 6,500 in the period 1999–2009 (seeFig. 1). Assuming an average of seven authors perpaper—the mean of the sample—this would leave nearly252,000 individuals for whom basic biographical informa-tion would need to be obtained and manually recorded.Given that no repository of data on place of birth andnationality currently exists, gathering such informationwould be prohibitively time-consuming and cumbersome.Consequently, this research relies on a narrow, but stra-tegic, segment of this population.

Were the visibility and impact of research evenlydistributed, this limited scope would prove problematic.However, numerous studies indicate that the enterpriseof science is highly skewed, and research and researchersare not created equal. The existing literature on researchproductivity and influence reveals that neither is randomlynor uniformly distributed among scientists or the estab-lished body of scientific and technical knowledge. Interms of general productivity, roughly 6% of scientistspublish half of all papers—a trend found across countries,disciplines, and eras (Stephan and Levin 2001; cf. Lotka1926; Chung and Cox 1990). Moreover, these trends holdtrue for the differential influence of research as measuredby citation frequency. Specifically, a quarter of all pub-lished work is never cited, and the average yearly citationcount for all other papers is 1.7 (Garfield 1979; Stephanand Levin 2001). The implication of these dynamics is thatsignificant information can be gleaned by focusing onsmall clusters of researchers. Accordingly, it is quitesurprising that so little is known about the attributes ofleading scientists and engineers engaged in nanoscientificresearch, specifically in terms of their national origins.

This paper assesses whether the foreign-born are over-represented among individuals making high-impact con-tributions to American nanoscience. There are severalreasons why this may or may not be the case. First, aspreviously discussed, extant work indicates that, ingeneral, foreign-born scientists and engineers are notonly disproportionately represented within the scientificand engineering community, but are consistently amongthe most accomplished individuals working in their

30004000500060007000

010002000

1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009Year

Figure 1. Growth in American nanoscience publicationsindexed in Web of Science, 1999–2009.


respective fields (Lee 2004; Wadwha et al. 2007;Espenshade et al. 2001). Second, given the level of riskand personal sacrifice that immigration often entails, theforeign-born are likely to be uniquely motivated whencompared to their native counterparts (Stephan andLevin 2001). Third, the available evidence suggests thatthe quality and quantity of native-born STEM studentshas been declining over the past several decades(National Academy of Sciences 2005). There are also di-vergent views concerning the achievements of foreign-bornscientists and engineers (Levine 2010). Studies of skilledimmigrant workers suggests that, rather than being the‘best and brightest’, the foreign-born are simply thecheapest—a trend confirmed by a notable earnings gapbetween native and foreign skilled workers (Bach 2001;Stine and Matthews 2009). Other research has indicatedthat, despite claims to the contrary, foreign-born scientistsand engineers played a negligible role in the majority ofcritical innovations concerning computer science and in-formation technology (Matloff 1998, 2006). Finally, it isheld that social and institutional factors, whether linguisticbarriers, cultural unfamiliarity with the host society, andactual or perceived discrimination, may adversely impactthe productivity and success of foreign researchers (Lee2004).

In addition to measuring the prevalence of the foreign-born within the nanoscientific elite, this paper studiespatterns concerning research activity. More thanrepositories of skills and knowledge, researchers exist asnodes in broader collaborative networks, which have aprofound bearing on the transmission of scientific andtechnical knowledge. According to extant work highly-skilled migrants play a prominent role in integratingcommunities of researchers across national borders andpromoting flows and exchanges of information and expert-ise (Mahroum 2000; Skeldon 2009) Given the inherentlysynergistic nature of the innovation process, foreign re-searchers, by minimizing transaction costs, communicationproblems, uncertainty, and other barriers to scientific dis-covery, play a crucial role in facilitating the internationalcirculation of tacit knowledge.

To test these hypotheses, after identifying the top per-centile of nanoscientific publications by citation countsand removing authors with institutional affiliationsoutside of the USA, the resulting database included 362articles with 1,937 authors (1,373 when excluding repeatauthorships). For each unique individual codes werecreated for year of publication, field of research, corres-ponding or non-corresponding author status, total author-ships, institutional affiliation, number of co-authors,nature of collaborative activity, and, when available,contact information.8

The data employed in this study imposed importantlimitations that should be explicitly acknowledged. First,was determining the degree of contribution in multi-authored papers. Presently there is no standard protocol

regarding authorship attribution and order, and, as aresult, the hierarchical structure of authorship cannot bereliably captured, and remains opaque to outside observers(Strange 2008; Tscharntke et al. 2007).9 Presented withthese issues corresponding author status was the only iden-tifier that could be reliably extracted from the samplepopulation. In science and engineering this title generallydesignates the lab leader or principal investigator, and,typically denotes the author who designs, directs, super-vises, and guarantees the validity of the research and:

. . . implicitly take[s] responsibility for the work’s scientificaccuracy, valid methodology, analysis, and conclusions.

(Strange 2008: 570; cf. Baerlocher et al. 2007; McKneally 2006)

While these norms are tacit, unofficial, and subject to somevariation across country’s and research communities, forthe 168 corresponding authors in this study 142 (85%)were full professors and lab leaders at major researchuniversities.10 Accordingly, one can be reasonably confi-dent that corresponding author status provides a robustindicator of significant contribution.

Another important issue is the efficacy of citation countsas a measure of scientific contribution. The number of cit-ations received by academic publications provides ameasure of the utility, impact, or influence of researchand assists in uncovering trends in the diffusion and appli-cation of information (Aksnes 2003; Tijssen et al. 2002).11

While citation counts:

. . . correspond fairly well . . .with various measures of research

performance or scientific recognition. (Aksnes and Hessen2009: 160)

According to existing work in bibliometrics and the soci-ology of science there are several factors independent ofthe quality and rigor of the research that may contribute tocitation bias or the disproportionate visibility of certainresearch and researchers (Merton 1968; Seglen 1992). Ofparticular importance are the issues of ‘field effects’,number of authors, and international collaboration. Ithas been widely documented that citation counts arestructured by field-dependent dynamics, with papers pub-lished in larger disciplines and subfields consistentlyreceiving more citations. (Seglen 1992).12 Additionally,studies suggest that the nature and degree of collaborationhas significant implications. In particular, the number ofauthors and international collaborations are positivelycorrelated with the reception and influence of research(Aksnes 2003; Persson et al. 2004).

Given the nature of this study’s data, controlling for andnormalizing potential sources of citations bias across theentire universe of nanoscience research was practically un-realistic since it would involve manually identifying andcoding ten thousands of publications and their authors.Presented with the vast number of publications, therewas no viable alternative to employing aggregate citationscounts. Additionally, given its interests in providing a


synoptic view of nanoscience research, this study seeks to

identify members of the international nanoscientific elite

regardless of subspecialty, and rests on the important as-

sumption that general contributions are more important

than specialized ones. Further, in relation to the issue of

‘field effects’ scientific fields are not closed systems, and

defining or delineating areas of research is often a

complicated and arduous process. These boundary issues

are uniquely relevant for nanoscience as many articles and

journals address complex subjects that cannot be un-

equivocally associated with a single discipline or

subdiscipline.Given these issues, there are obviously numerous im-

provements that could be made to this research, but a

continuing lack of easily manageable and usable data

places significant constraints on such efforts.

Nonetheless, as will be further discussed, the profile of

the sample population reveals that the number of co-

authors, subfield affiliation, and collaborative activities

were evenly distributed between native and foreign-born,

indicating that this study’s results do not appear to be

skewed by these underlying factors.Once the sample population was identified information

on nativity was gathered. It should be noted that legal

status and social identities concerning nationality and citi-

zenship are often unstable and notoriously complex.

Moreover, nativity and migration status have been

variably categorized according to geographic and social

factors, whether country of birth or country of education

and socialization (Rumbaut 2004; Stephan and Levin

2001). For the sake of clarity and simplicity this research

relies on traditional measures and equates foreign-born

status with first-generation immigrants born outside of

the USA. At the risk of some oversimplification, it is the

easiest metric to reliably operationalize, and is the

standard method employed by national governments and

international organizations. Additionally, this approach

conforms to the procedures employed by the National

Science Foundation (NSF) and US Census Bureau, the

sources of this study’s benchmark data.13

Collecting data on nativity involved a two-step process.

First, if possible, the national origin of each researcher was

determined using biographical resources (for example,

directories like the American Men and Women of

Science, Academia.edu, Linked In, and curriculum vitae

obtained from departmental or professional websites). In

this stage country of birth was determined for 369 individ-

uals or 27% of the sample. Email and physical addresses

were sought for those with missing data, and 654 surveys

were successfully sent with three subsequent reminders,

when necessary.14 The survey received 182 responses, a

rate of 28%. As Table 1 shows, by using these two steps

nativity was determined for 40.1% of our population.

When only counting corresponding authors this figure

rose to 62.9%; for those with two to five and more than

five authorships, nativity was determined for 54% and83%, respectively.

To gauge the significance of this study’s findings theobserved frequency of foreign-born status was comparedwith the expected frequency given the percentage of theforeign-born in both the general US population, and thescientific and engineering community. Data regarding theformer was obtained from the US Census Bureau, whileinformation concerning the later was obtained from theNSF’s survey of employed scientists and engineers with adoctorate.15 In comparing these frequencies a non-parametric ‘goodness of fit’ test was conducted togenerate the chi-square statistic. Additionally, the signifi-cance of differences in productivity and co-authorshippatters were determined using a two-sample t-test ofmeans, and the strength of interactions between nativityand patterns of collaboration were tested through multi-variate logistic regression.

Before proceeding to the results an important caveat isin order. Rather than a fixed number, citation counts areconstantly evolving as additional research is published anddisseminated. Given the gap between the initial phase ofdata collection and the completion of this paper (approxi-mately two years) there may very well be movement in andout of the top percentile. Faced with these constraints, aswell as those concerning the size of this study’s populationand character of the data on which it relies, the followinganalysis should not be viewed as a definitive statement, butrather a crucial first step in constructing a more nuancedunderstanding of the American nonscientific communityspecifically, and highly-skilled migration more generally.

4. Results

4.1 Profile and nativity of leading nanoscientists

The results of this research indicate that individualsconducting high-impact nanoscience research in theperiod 1999–2009 were not merely disproportionately

Table 1. Population size and aggregate contributions of foreign-born

nanoscientists 1999–2009

Total Percent of

population

data obtained on

Percent

foreign-born

All authors 1373 40.1 67.6*

Corresponding authors 267 62.9 56.5*

Individuals with 2–5

authorships

250 54 65.9*

Individuals with 5+

authorships

29 83 66.7*

Chi-squared test of observed and expected frequencies are employed. Expected

values are calculated using the proportion of the foreign-born in the American

population and science and engineerng labor force

*p= .001 or less


foreign-born, but were overwhelmingly so—trends thatheld across all categories of authorship (see Table 1).Over two-thirds of the sample population was foreign-born. For corresponding authors approximately 57%were born outside of the USA, a figure that rose to 66%and 67% for those with multiple authorships, whether twoto five, or over five, respectively. For all categories inquestion these rates far exceeded the expected rates givenboth the prevalence of the foreign-born in the generalpopulation as well as within the American scientific laborforce. When compared to these benchmark populations,differences were found to be significant at the �0.001 level.

When these dynamics were studied over time it wasrevealed that the contributions of the foreign-bornincreased in tandem with nanotechnology’s emergence asa codified and well-established domain of research. Foreach year the proportion of foreign-born authors ofleading publications ranged from 53% to 73% (seeFig. 2). As with this study’s aggregate results, theobserved prevalence of foreign-born nanoscientists sur-passed their expected contributions when compared tothe American population and scientific labor force.16

Additionally, although these outcomes display some tur-bulence, on average the impact of non-native researchersgrew over time, and in the period 1999–2004 60.6% of thisstudy’s population was foreign-born versus 67.6% in theperiod 2005–9, an increase of 11.6%.

Although the effects of subfield, number of authorshipsand co-authors, and patterns of collaboration on citationfrequency could not be easily normalized, descriptive stat-istics concerning the profile of highly-cited researcherssuggest there is minimal variation between native andforeign-born. The distribution of researchers across discip-lines and subfields was largely congruent, with both groupsdisproportionately concentrated in chemistry, physics, andmaterials science (see Table 2). Additionally, both thenumber of total highly-cited papers and co-authors per

individual did not diverge significantly, with the foreign-born, on average, generating fewer high-impact publica-tions and working with fewer co-authors (see Table 3).Although statistical tests did not find these differences sig-nificant, one would expect these outcomes to disadvantagethe foreign-born given the positive correlation betweenresearch productivity, number of co-authors, and citationcounts. Finally, both groups displayed similar patterns ofcollaborative activity. Across all patterns of boundary-spanning collaboration, whether those at the institutional,disciplinary, or national level, foreign-born researcherswere slightly less likely than their native counterparts toengage in collaborative research—a dynamic that will bediscussed in Section 4.2 (see Table 4).

4.2 Institutional affiliation, collaborative networks,and country of origin

For each author in the sample population data on institu-tional affiliation was collected and coded by academic

0.00%

10.00%

20.00%

30.00%

40.00%

50.00%

60.00%

70.00%

80.00%

1999* 2000* 2001* 2002* 2003* 2004* 2005* 2006* 2007* 2008* 2009*

Perc

ent F

orei

gn B

orn

YearAuthors of Leading Nanoscience Publications US Population US Scientists and Engineers with Doctorate

Figure 2. Proportion of foreign-born authors in comparisonto US population and science and engineering labor force.Chi-squared tests of observed and expected frequencies areused. Expected values are calculated using the proportion ofthe foreign-born in the US population and the American scien-tific and engineering community.*p=0.001 or less when benchmarked against the stock of theforeign-born in the US population and the scientific labor force.

Table 2. Distribution of leading nanoscience researchers by subfield

Native born Foreign born Total

Science 114 (63.7%) 229 (61.6%) 343 (62.3%)

Biology 8 (4.5%) 19 (5.1%) 27 (4.9%)

Chemistry 59 (33.0%) 137 (36.8%) 196 (35.6%)

Cognitive science 1 (0.6%) 0 (0.0%) 1 (0.2%)

Computer science 3 (1.7%) 3 (0.8%) 6 (1.1%)

Medicine/Pharmacology 13 (7.3%) 23 (6.2%) 36 (6.5%)

Physics 30 (16.8%) 47 (12.6%) 77 (14.0%)

Engineering 65 (36.3%) 143 (38.4%) 208 (37.7%)

Bioengineering 3 (1.7%) 1 (0.3%) 4 (0.7%)

Chemical engineering 11 (6.2%) 32 (8.6%) 43 (7.8%)

Electrical engineering 16 (8.9%) 29 (7.8%) 45 (8.2%)

Environmental engineering 4 (2.2%) 3 (0.8%) 7 (1.3%)

Materials science 26 (14.5%) 67 (18.0%) 93 (16.9%)

Mechanical engineering 5 (2.8%) 11 (3.0%) 16 (2.9%)

Table 3. Comparison of authorship patterns of leading nanoscience

researchers

Range Mean Median Standard

Deviation

Total number of authorships*

Foreign-born 1:20 1.62 1 1.72

Native-born 1:22 1.75 1 2.18

Number of co-authors*

Foreign-born 1:23 6.17 6 3.37

Native-born 0:23 6.36 6 3.41

*A two-sample T-test at alpha=0.05 is used to test the significance in the differ-

ence in means. For authorships P=0.4478; for number of co-authors P=0.5389


institution, private firm, and government research labora-tory to determine if native and non-native researchers weredifferentially positioned within the American innovationsystem. As shown in Table 5 researchers were overwhelm-ingly clustered in academic institutions rather than in firmsand research laboratories. These outcomes were largelyreplicated when comparing native and foreign-born indi-viduals. For the former approximately 88% were found inacademia versus 6% in both research laboratories and theprivate sphere. For the foreign-born these counts were86%, 5%, and 9%, respectively.

Additionally, to test the relationship between nativityand collaborative activity multivariate logistic regressionwas performed, controlling for field of research, numberof authors, year of publication, and number of authorshipswithin the sample. Despite claims that foreign researchersact as strategic intermediaries and play a distinctive role inpromoting the internationalization of science, this study’sresults fail to provide commensurate evidence. Statisticaltests do not confirm that the foreign-born are more likelyto engage in collaborative research as none of the variablesapproached statistical significance at the p< 0.05 level (seeTable 6).

Alongside the USA, leading nanoscience researcherscame from 54 countries in every region. In terms of theirgeographic profile, foreign-born nanoscientists reflectrecent shifts in the national origins of highly-skilled immi-grants from Europe to the Asian Pacific region(Espenshade et al. 2001). As Table 7 indicates East andSouth Asia provided over half of the foreign-born re-searchers in this study. This was followed by Canadaand Europe with approximately one-third, and theMiddle East with 7%. Latin America, Australia/Oceania,and Sub-Saharan Africa all provided less than 5%. Forcountry of origin 32% of the population was from the

USA. China, and India provided the largest contributionsof foreign-born researchers with each providing 20% and7% of our population, respectively. Germany, Korea,France, Russia, Canada, the UK, Israel, and Taiwanwere the other leading countries of origin, each providingless than 5% (see Fig. 3).

When controlling for authorship the leading contribu-tors largely remain the same. As Table 8 shows, for cor-responding authors the leading countries of origin were theUSA, China, India, and Germany. For scientists and en-gineers with two to five authorships the top three countrieswere the same, while Germany was replaced by Italy andRussia. Additionally, while the USA was, by far, theleading contributor of corresponding authors, this wasless the case for researchers with multiple authorships(see Tables 9 and 10). In the later instance the USAprovided 35% of those authoring two to five papers,while China and India provided 32% and 9%, respectively.Finally, when examining the nativity of the leading re-searchers in the sample, or those with five or more author-ships, China surpassed the USA and was the leadingcountry of origin.

5. Discussion and conclusions

While advances in science and technology have historicallyprovided a central motor of economic development andsocial transformation, in the present post-industrialcontext intellectual production has provided an

Table 6. Multivariate logistic regression to investigate the interactions

between nativity and collaborative activity

Variable Coefficient SE OR 95% CI P

Institutional

collaboration

0.2164 0.2347 1.2416 0.7838–1.9668 0.3565

Interdisciplinary

collaboration

�0.0783 0.221 0.9247 0.5996–1.4258 0.723

International

collaboration

�0.1002 0.2835 0.9047 0.5190–1.5770 0.7238

CI, confidence interval; OR, odds ration; SE, standard error

Controls are subfield, total high-impact authorships, year of publication, and

number of co-authors (omitted from the table)

Table 7. Region of origin for foreign-born researchers

Region Number

East and South Asia 200 (53.9%)

Europe/Canada 120 (32.34%)

Middle East/North Africa 27 (7.28%)

Latin America 17 (4.58%)

Sub-Saharan Africa 4 (1.1%)

Australia/Oceania 3 (0.8%)

Table 5. Institutional distribution of leading nanoscience researchers

Native-born Foreign-born Total

Academic 157 (87.7%) 319 (85.8%) 476 (86.4%)

Government

research labs

11 (6.15%) 19 (5.11%) 30 (5.44%)

Private firms 11 (6.15%) 34 (9.14%) 45 (8.17%)

Total 179 (100%) 372 (100%) 551 (100%)

Table 4. Collaborative activity of leading nanoscience researchers

Native born Foreign born Total

Inter-institutional collaboration 84 (46.9%) 176 (47.3%) 260 (47.2%)

Inter-disciplinary collaboration 124 (69.2%) 251 (67.5%) 375 (68.1%)

Inter-national collaboration 35 (19.6 %) 72 (19.4%) 107 (19.4%)


increasingly critical component of national innovationsystems (Hart 2007). More than natural or financial re-sources, human resources and intellectual capital are a—if not the—critical ingredient of economic success andleadership. Moreover, the available evidence suggeststhat national competitiveness and innovation hinge uponthe flow of skilled immigrants working in STEM-relatedfields. Acknowledging these dynamics, this research has

sought to deepen understandings of research on nanotech-nology—a field defined as a revolutionary platform tech-nology with significant economic and societal implications,and which has resulted in substantial public investmentacross a wide range of countries. In particular it hasutilized previously unanalyzed data concerning thenational origins of high-impact researchers to enhanceand broaden existing studies of nanoscience innovation.By examining the nativity and activities of nanoscienceresearchers, this study not only highlights significanttrends over the last decade, but assists in identifyinglikely future trends concerning the composition of theAmerican nanoscientific community.

Based on a sample of 551 US-based scientists and en-gineers, the preceding analysis suggests that, while there isminor variation by authorship status and frequency,leading nanoscientists were not only disproportionatelyforeign-born, but, as a group, were dominated by non-native individuals. In general, the prevalence of foreign-born scientists and engineers significantly exceeds that of

Table 8. Nativity of corresponding authors

Country Total researchers

USA 69 (41%)

China 30 (18%)

India 10 (6%)

Germany 6 (4%)

Israel 5 (3%)

UK 5 (3%)

Canada 4 (2%)

Russia 4 (2%)

Taiwan 4 (2%)

France 2 (1%)

Greece 2 (1%)

Japan 2 (1%)

Korea 2 (1%)

Poland 2 (1%)

Serbia 2 (1%)

South Africa 2 (1%)

Other* 15 (9%)

Total 168 (100%)

*Other includes: Costa Rica, Greece, Iran, Lebanon,

Mauritius, Poland, South Africa, Sweden, Taiwan,

Thailand, Tunisia, Uzbekistan

Other* , 23%Na�ve born, 33%

Canada, 2%

UK, 2%

China 20%I di 8%

Germany, 4%

Korea, 4%

France, 2%

Russia, 2%

China, 20%India, 8%

Figure 3. Nativity of sample population.Israel, Taiwan, Argentina, Italy, Lebanon, Mexico, Poland,Greece, Netherlands, Turkey, Japan, Austratlia, Belarus,Hungary, Ireland, South Africa, Thailand, Ukraine, Brazil,Croatia, Denmark, Indonesia, Kazakhstan, Serbia, Spain,Sweden, Switzerland, Uzbekistan, Bangladesh, Belgium,Bosnia and Herzegovina, Colombia, Costa Rica, Cyprus,Guatemala, Iran, Kuwait, Mauritius, Myanmar, Nepal,Nigeria, Portugal, Sri Lanka, Syria, Tunisia.

Table 9. Nativity of researchers with 2 to 5 authorships


USA 46 (34%)

China 38 (28%)

India 10 (7%)

Italy 4 (3%)

Russia 4 (3%)

Germany 3 (2%)

Israel 3 (2%)

Korea 3 (2%)

UK 3 (2%)

Belarus 2 (1.5%)

Canada 2 (1.5%)

France 2 (1.5%)

Hungary 2 (1.5%)

Other* 12 (9%)

Total 135 (100%)

*Other includes: Costa Rica, Greece, Iran, Lebanon, Mauritius,

Poland, South Africa, Sweden, Taiwan, Thailand, Tunisia,

Uzbekistan

Table 10. Nativity of researchers with 5 or more

authorships


China 10 (42%)

USA 8 (33%)

France 2 (8 %)

Egypt 1 (4%)

Hungary 1 (4%)

India 1 (4%)

Russia 1 (4%)

Total 24 (100%)


the general population (p< 0.001 for all years) andAmerican scientific community (p=0.001 for all years).The contribution of foreign-born individuals was alsofound to be statistically significant when analyzingdata on corresponding authors and individuals withmultiple high-impact publications. Additionally, ourresults indicate that the institutional distribution ofnative- and non-native-born did not vary regionally, andreveal that East and South Asian countries, particularlyChina and India, provided significant contributions.Finally, although over-represented among leading scien-tists and engineers, the preceding suggests that theresearch activities of foreign and native-born individualswere roughly identical, with both groups displaying similarpatterns of research output and collaboration.

In sum, these findings indicate that Americannanoscientific innovation has demonstrably benefitedfrom the inflow of foreign talent. Additionally, theyreveal that as a community of researchers, nanotechnologyhas experienced significant internal globalization. Based onexisting research on other emerging technologies, it seemslikely that this study’s findings are generalizable and linkedto broader trends concerning the internationalization ofscientific communities (Saxenian 2002; Wagner 2009;Zucker and Darby 2007). To better understand the pre-ponderance of foreigners within American nanoscienceand nanotechnology requires analysis of the subjectivemotives of researchers. In general terms, rather thanpurely economic motives associated with high returns onhuman capital, the mobility of scientists and engineersappears to be driven by opportunities for working inadvanced research environments, familial and personalconsiderations, and the perceived presence of significantprofessional opportunities (Barruffaldi and Landoni2012; Marhoum 2000). However, analysis of the specificmechanisms and considerations that draw individuals tothe field of nanotechnology are meager and fragmentary.While answering such questions is beyond the scope of thisstudy, one factor that appears to contribute to theseoutcomes is the major areas of nanoscientific research.Currently, nanoscience is dominated by work within chem-istry, physics, and engineering, which, in comparison to thelife sciences and other subfields, included significantlylarger numbers of foreign researchers (Stephan and Levin2001; National Science Foundation 2012; Walsh andRidge 2012).

Alongside its import for scholarship on nanoscience,and science and technology more generally, this researchhas significant implications for policy debates on immigra-tion. Human mobility is an important process that facili-tates patterns of international and inter-institutionalknowledge transfer. However, more than a spontaneousor mechanical reaction to market forces, these dynamicshinge upon organized governmental efforts. While assess-ing patterns of competition and displacement within theAmerican science and engineering labor market exceeds

the purview of this study, its findings point to the import-ance of a more liberalized open door policy in relation tohighly-skilled migration. In the case of nanotechnologyforeign-born scientists and engineers clearly contribute toAmerican competitiveness, and the country’s status as aleader in science and technology.

Nonetheless, these outcomes are not guaranteed, andthere are two reasons why these trends may shift in thefuture: the political intractability of the immigration issue,and heightened competition for highly-skilled immigrants.The latter includes both the efforts of advancedindustrialized countries to compete for foreign talent, aswell as, the implementation of diaspora policies by sendingstates to lure back accomplished immigrants for thepurposes of national development.

Unlike flows of goods, capital, and information, immi-gration remains the ‘last bastion of state sovereignty’(Dauvergne 2008: 47) and presents a crucial arena inwhich governments can control economic inputs and influ-ence the composition and human capital profile of theirpopulations. However, for the USA, since the attacks ofSeptember 11, immigration has increasingly been seenthrough the lens of national security. As evidence of anemergent ‘enforcement only’ environment (Cho 2008: 102),quotas for H1-B visas have been reduced, foreign studentshave been subject to greater visa restrictions and expandedsurveillance, and tighter regulations for the use of foreign-born researchers in federal laboratories have been imple-mented. For many observers such trends may potentiallyundermine America’s competitiveness and innovative edgein nanotechnology and other high-technology fields. Inparticular, the current obsession with immigrant enforce-ment and restriction as a critical component of nationalsecurity has neglected the importance of technologicalinnovation as a central underpinning of American leader-ship, influence, and ‘soft power’ (Nye 2004). Commentingon the US case Brown and Bean (2009: 67) claim:

The irony [is] that . . . ‘hard’ national security measures canerode ‘soft’ power and thus in turn the very security suchmeasures were designed to enhance. In the post-9/11 US

case, the implementation of hard . . . .visa requirements forthe admission of international science and technologystudents may have undermined, at least in the short term,the country’s soft power.

Additionally, this restrictive turn may unsettle America’scapacity to succeed in the global race for talent (Shachar2006). From a long-term perspective it is widely feared thatthe USA may be perceived as less hospitable andwelcoming than Australia, Canada, the UK, and othercountries that have amplified efforts to lure talentedforeign students and researchers to their territories.Further, China and India, the two leading sources offoreign-born nanoscientists, have recently pursued‘diaspora policies’ based on a series of incentivesdesigned to incite a ‘reverse brain drain’ and spur the


return migration of highly-skilled foreign nationals(Chakravartty 2001; Kapur 2001; Simon and Cao 2009).Their goal is to harness reverse flows of human capital toaugment technological and industrial upgrading and tran-sition from a peripheral source of low-wage workers toglobal leaders in high-technology sectors (Parker andAppelbaum 2012; Saxenian 2006). While traditionallyconceived as a strategy employed by newly industrializingstates, many developed countries, Canada, Australia, andNew Zealand, among others, have entered the fray andimplemented policies to manage the loyalties and migra-tion patterns of ‘expatriate experts’ (Larner 2007; cf.Laudel 2005). Under this latter scenario it is entirelypossible that many individuals included in this study mayreturn to their original homelands or move onto greenerpastures. While not systematically examined, based on thecontact information we gathered, it appears that severalhave already done so.

While this study has answered important questionsabout the impact of foreign-born nanoscientists, manymore remain. In addition to being provisional, thepreceding analysis is partial. Specifically, it only providesa cross-sectional view of the foreign-born’s contributionsto American nanoscience research, and does not addressthe broader research, career, and migration trajectoriesof our subject population. Additionally, it fails toconsider other measures concerning innovative output.Accordingly, rather than a final statement the analysis pre-sented within this study is meant to foster discussion,stimulate debate, and highlight new pathways for subse-quent investigation. In these respects additional research isboth necessary and desirable. Despite these limits, thisresearch does illuminate a previously neglected topic anddemonstrates the importance of immigrants as a crucialinput in the innovation process.

In addition to expanding the size of the sample popula-tion, which is necessary to better understand the contribu-tions of ‘non-elite’ scientists and more clearly map theinternational division of scientific labor (Hess andRothaermel 2012), future research in the following threeareas would be especially fruitful. First, to address patternsof citation bias, and achieve a more nuanced view ofnanoscience innovation, future studies could rankauthors within particular fields and compare the relativeposition of foreign-born researchers across disciplines andsubdisciplines. Second, research could adopt a broaderfocus and study additional metrics of innovation. Here,future work could include studies of the contributions bythe foreign-born to nanotechnology-related patents andstart-up firms, as well as, their role in obtaining researchfunding and forging university–industry partnerships.While studies have examined these topics, they have yetto consider the issue of immigration (Beaudry andKananian 2013). In particular, interrogating these latertypes of data would provide critical information on com-mercialization and those possessing ‘directly productive

talent’ (Solimano 2008) or individuals who constitutecritical nodes that assist in translating ‘upstream’ generalknowledge and basic science into ‘downstream’ productsand innovations that are commercially viable and sociallybeneficial (Zucker and Darby 1996).

Finally, and most importantly, future studies couldprovide detailed assessments of the migration and careertrajectories of foreign-born scientists. By highlighting boththe frequency of immigration and the motivationsunderlying relocation, such an agenda would deepenunderstandings of the factors that promote and inhibitcross-national mobility. Additionally, such an approachpromises to uncover the role of government policy—whether the admissions and visa policies of receivingsocieties or diaspora policies designed by sending statesto induce return migration—in influencing the compos-ition of the scientific labor force. At a broader conceptuallevel, it promises to highlight the role of mobile and trans-national communities of scientists and engineers inpromoting innovation (Wagner 2009). The growing im-portance of mobility in undergirding the human capitalprofile and innovative capacity of countries, firms, andregions, points to the increasingly globalized nature ofthe scientific enterprise and challenges the methodologicalnationalism inherent in received work on national innov-ation systems.

Funding

This work was supported by the National ScienceFoundation under Grant No. SES 0531184. Anyopinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendationsexpressed in this material are those of the author and donot necessarily reflect the views of the National ScienceFoundation. It was conducted under the auspices of theUniversity of California Santa Barbara’s Center forNanotechnology in Society (<www.cns.ucsb.edu>).

Acknowledgements

This work has benefited from the comments of RichardAppelbaum. Additionally, Paolo Gardineli at Universityof California’s Santa Barbera Survey Research Centerprovided invaluable assistance during the data collectionphase of this research.

Notes

1. In 2006 such companies employed over 450,000workers, and generated over US$50 billion inrevenue (Wadwha et al. 2007).

2. According to the National Nanotechnology Initiative(2013):

Nanotechnology is science, engineering, and tech-nology conducted at the nanoscale, which is about


www.cns.ucsb.edu

1–100 nanometers. [It involves] the study and appli-cation of extremely small things and can be usedacross all the other science fields, such as chemistry,biology, physics, materials science, and engineering.Nanotechnology is not just a new field of scienceand engineering, but a new way of looking at andstudying.

3. Government funding for the NNI in the period 2001–12 totals nearly US$17 billion dollars.

4. When utilizing this search string the paper’s title andabstract was examined. The search string includedthe following keywords: NANOPARTICLE*OR NANOTUB* OR NANOSTRUCTURE* ORNANOCOMPOSITE* OR NANOWIRE* ORNANOCRYSTAL* OR NANOFIBER*OR NANOSPHERE* OR NANOROD* ORNANOTECHNOLOG* OR NANOCLUSTER* ORNANOCAPSULE* OR NANOMATERIAL*OR NANOFABRICAT* OR NANOPOR* ORNANOPARTICULATE* OR NANOPHASE ORNANOPOWDER* OR NANOLITHOGRAPHYOR NANO-PARTICLE* OR NANODEVICE*OR NANODOT* OR NANOINDENT* ORNANOLAYER* OR NANOSCIENCE ORNANOSCALE* OR QUANTUM DOT*OR QUANTUM WIRE* OR NANOELECTRO-SPRAY* OR MOLECULAR WIRE* OR((NANOMETER* OR NANOMETRE*) AND(FILM* OR GRAIN* OR POWDER* ORLAYER* OR DEVICE* OR CLUSTER* ORCRYSTAL* OR MATERIAL* OR MICROSCOP*))OR ((SELFASSEMBL* OR SELF-ORGANIZ*)AND (MONOLAYER* OR FILM* OR NANO*OR QUANTUM* OR LAYER* ORMULTILAYER* OR ARRAY*)).

5. This study only examines peer-reviewed journalarticles. Reviews, editorials, and other types of litera-ture are excluded. Additionally, only articles with atleast one author with an institutional affiliation in theUSA were examined.

6. In addition to growth in publications, the number ofpatents, nano-related dissertations, and start-up firmsalso expanded precipitously during this period (Walshand Ridge 2012).

7. According to Tijssen et al. (2002) authorship of highly-cited publications is positively correlated with several

other metrics of scientific achievement. It is, however,

important to acknowledge that, faced with the scaleand diversity of scientific research and technological

innovation, distinctions of eminence must ultimately

be constructed rather arbitrarily.8. For measures of collaboration, these were computed

by analyzing the proportion of authors who had pub-lished with researchers from other institutions, discip-

lines, and countries. In the case of individuals with

multiple authorships average rates were employed

and, when scoring above 50%, were coded as collab-

orative in nature.9. Additionally, authorship order is often ambiguous,

symbolic, and contested among researchers themselves(Zuckerman 1968). A 2002 survey of researchers

funded by the US National Institutes of Healthrevealed 10% had inappropriately assigned authorshipcredit, and a survey of 919 corresponding authors pub-lished in the Canadian Medical Association Journal

found two-thirds disagreed with their co-authors re-garding the contributions of each author (Andersonet al. 2007; Ilakovac et al. 2007).

10. Of the remaining corresponding authors ten weresenior researchers or group leaders at private

firms or national laboratories, nine were associateprofessors, three were assistant professors, three weregraduate students, and one was a post-doctoral fellow.

Additionally, all individuals authoring five or morehigh-impact publications were full professors and lableaders at major research universities.

11. While citation counts and associated indicatorsprovide valuable information concerning the nature

of knowledge production and diffusion, in the finalanalysis, bibliometric measures are quantitative ab-stractions of qualitative and subjective phenomenawhether ‘truth’, quality, or value. Accordingly:

. . . citation analysis, however sophisticated it may

be, cannot be a substitute for critical reading andexpert judgment. (Franchigioni and Lasa 2011)

12. For example papers with 100 or more citations are 50times more common in developmental biology than

aerospace engineering (Persson et al. 2004).13. While data concerning individuals belonging to the 1.5

generation (those migrating during childhood andadolescence) was not obtained, the available evidencesuggests that the vast majority of foreign-born scien-

tists and engineers in the USA migrated after obtain-ing a Bachelor’s degree in their home country (Lee2004).

14. Current contact information could not be obtained for351 individuals.

15. For the later only data for the years 1999, 2003, 2006,and 2008 could be obtained. For all other years esti-

mates were based on assumptions of normal rates ofgrowth.

16. While aggregate counts do not include repeat author-ships, in an effort to provide an accurate assessment ofthe leading authors for each year in question, the

temporal measures used in this study do. However,authors of multiple papers within a given year wereonly counted once. Data was organized in this way

given that the unit of analysis was individual authorsand not academic papers or reports.


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The impact of foreign-born scientists and engineers on American nanoscience research

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