In a new paper published today in PNAS, Jacopo and I try to extract as much information as possible from an ostensibly meager source of data: a list of the names of all the researchers working in Italy, at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique in France, and at public universities in the US.
We show that by using simple randomizations, one can highlight several interesting facts about these different academic systems.
In how many ways can you randomize a list of last names?
The work is a bona fide exercise in style: by introducing subtle variations of the randomization algorithm, we show that in Italy researchers work in the region where they were born and raised, while in the US geography does not influence the distribution of researchers; in France, we can detect academic couples working in the same unit; we demonstrate that academic nepotism in Italy (the focus of a previous paper of mine) is declining; finally, we show that in the US immigration is field-specific.
Jacopo Grilli & Stefano Allesina
Last name analysis of mobility, gender imbalance, and nepotism across academic systems
PNAS, 2017
Because the article is paywalled for 6 months, I have stored a personal copy here.
The data and code are available on GitHub.
The article is being covered by the popular press. Here below we link some of the coverage:
In English : EurekAlert; Science Life; U Chicago News; Nature;
In Italian : Corriere della Sera; adnkronos; La Repubblica; Lettera43; Il Giornale; Wired; Wired (again); Corriere della Sera 1 and 2; Il Messaggero; Il Tempo; Sole 24 ore; Rai TV TG 1; TGCOM 24; Il Foglio (genius! …not really); Il Fatto Quotidiano; Il Foglio (again); La Stampa;
Other languages : Naked science (Russian); Science Times (Korean); polit.ru (Russian); Xataka Ciencia (Spanish);
Update : the study was mentioned on 9/25/2017 in the TG3 news, in relation to a new scandal in which professors allegedly conspired to have their pupils hired irrespective of merit:
The edition of the evening contains a brief interview with Jacopo:
On October 12th, TG3 broadcast a discussion on this theme (with Francesco Sylos Labini and Vincenzo Barone), which includes an interview with yours truly: