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Abstract:
The affiliation to an institution provides prestige and identity to researchers and determines access to resources and infrastructure. Institutions in turn seek to affiliate researchers to secure their knowledge and skills, benefiting the research conducted within these institutions and their position in national and international rankings. This study documents the phenomenon of researchers having multiple affiliations and discusses potential causes and consequences. We analyze affiliation information of 8.5M authors from 40 countries, who published 8.9M scientific articles in 14 disciplines since 1996. We find that multiple affiliations occur both within countries as well as across borders, and that more than 60% are within the academic research sector. The share of authors with multiple affiliations increased substantially over the past two decades and particularly since the mid-2000s. The increase is particularly pronounced in countries whose funding structures became more competitive. The rise of multiple affiliations points to fundamental changes in the organisation of science and challenges our measurements of where scientific activity takes place.
