Does international student mobility foster scientific collaboration? Evidence from a network analysis

The knowledge production capacity of a country depends not only on its internal innovation factors, but also on its ‘social capital’ in the global network. International student mobility networks have become an important component of social capital that affects a country’s knowledge production capacity. This study combines the social network analysis method and econometrics method to visualise and quantitatively evaluate international student mobility and scientific collaboration networks. Using a study period of 2001–2015 and data taken primarily from UNESCO (with the exception of China), we find that international student mobility and scientific collaboration have a high degree of spatial matching. Further, the national positions in scientific collaboration networks have a positive and significant correlation with their positions in international student mobility networks, leading to greater knowledge production and collaborative output.