On the Colombian scientific elite IV: too local, too global
In a series of posts, I’ve been writing on preliminary findings of ongoing research on the Colombian scientific elite, or those awarded with the Alejandro Ángel Escobar Nacional Award (AAENA) (1990–2020). A couple of posts dealt with the overall semantic network built on the document titles awarded with the AAENA and the social sciences and humanities category. Another post pointed to sex disparities among AAENA awardees.
Here I present the institution and the country where the awardees received their last or highest academic degree.
The figure at the bottom presents the results by university countries.
Results show that the Colombian scientific elite is both too local and too global.
Thirty-one percent of awardees have completed an academic degree in the USA, 28% a Ph.D. in reputable universities such as Harvard, MIT, Yale, or Wisconsin-Madison. In contrast, 27% of them have completed an academic degree in Colombia, 12.5% a Ph.D. in reputable local universities such as Nacional, Antioquia, Valle, or Los Andes.
Contrasting that picture with other views, an epidemiological model showed that ideas originated at reputable institutions spread further and broader than ideas of similar quality from less prominent institutions (i.e., another grain of cement added to the Matthew-Effect pillar).
Therefore, the association “local/global-reputable-institution+idea” has been signaled with the AAENA.
Now, as the researchers of the epidemiological model asked, what is happening with ideas that originated in institutions out of the top-tier sphere?
