Faculty Publication Productivity and Collaboration in Pakistan: Using Mixed Methods to Compare Foreign and Domestic Doctoral Degree Holders

In higher education research, publication productivity and collaboration of foreign doctoral degree holders have been thoroughly examined in developed countries. However, they have been given less attention in developing countries such as Pakistan, despite their growing visibility and significance in HEIs. The purpose of this study was to examine faculty publication productivity and collaboration differences between foreign and domestic doctoral degree holders. The theoretical premise of the study was based on knowledge recombination theory and mobility approaches, and the study used a convergent parallel mixed methods design. The empirical data consist of 232 faculty members and 17 semi-structured interviews with university administrators collected from 14 public universities. The findings of the study revealed that foreign doctoral degree holders had not produced a greater total of refereed journal articles than their domestic doctoral holder colleagues. Qualitative findings also supported the quantitative findings of the study, as well as made a theoretical contribution to knowledge recombination theory and mobility approaches. Our findings suggested that mobility helps knowledge flows and knowledge gained from distant sources is significantly more creative when compared to domestic knowledge. Additionally, analysis demonstrated that certain foreign doctoral holders are particularly productive and could have benefited from unique knowledge not accessible to their domestic doctoral colleagues. The findings also recognized that those who move internationally and opt for foreign study could be beneficial for home countries and undoubtedly help institutions achieve their research excellence goals. Further discussion and implications are provided.