China-born scholars’ intellectual capital: a network approach

ABSTRACT

Foreign-born scholars can accumulate and/or utilise their intellectual capital (IC) through intellectual migration. IC is a combination of transferrable human, cultural, and social capital. While IC has been conceptualised, no known studies have measured it. As foreign-born scholars often develop academic networks that transcend geographical and ethnic boundaries, their IC should not be simplified as a single scale. Adopting the ego-centric network analysis method, this study proposes an approach to quantify foreign-born scholars’ IC based on their co-author network. This approach includes a group of measures to capture IC within and between different geographic and ethnic contexts. Based on the co-authorship data collected among China-born scholars at a public research university in the U.S., this study examines how their IC levels evolve over time, differ between younger- and older-generation scholars, and whether they are influenced by where one receives a PhD degree.

KEYWORDS:

• China-born scholars
• intellectual capital
• transnational research collaboration
• social network analysis
• co-authorship networks

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).