Finding stars: mapping the geography of the world’s scientific elites

Rodríguez-Pose, Andrés ORCID: 0000-0002-8041-0856, Lee, Neil ORCID: 0000-0002-4138-7163 and Xiang, Leiboyu (2025) Finding stars: mapping the geography of the world’s scientific elites. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers. ISSN 0020-2754

Text (Trans Inst British Geog - 2025 - Rodríguez‐Pose - Finding Stars Mapping the Geography of the World s Scientific Elites) - Published Version Available under License Creative Commons Attribution. Download (5MB)

Abstract

This paper presents the first systematic city‐level mapping of global scientific talent, analysing the top 200,000 star scientists across 3635 cities worldwide annually between 2019 and 2023. We use a novel Knowledge Generation Index (KGI) that combines researcher quantity with research impact to reveal extreme spatial concentration in knowledge production. Just four cities—New York, Boston, London and the San Francisco Bay Area—host 12% of the world's star scientists, while much of the Global South remains virtually excluded from frontier research. Beijing's ascent into the global top 10 represents a rare challenge to established hierarchies. Our analysis uncovers striking disciplinary variations. Resource‐intensive fields like clinical medicine cluster heavily, and traditionally dispersed disciplines are increasingly gravitating towards major hubs. Despite these differences, concentration is intensifying across most scientific fields. Even the pandemic's remote collaboration experiment failed to level the playing field. Established innovation centres continued strengthening their advantages while peripheral regions fell further behind. Overall, we find that geography remains destiny, with profound implications for innovation policy confronting widening spatial inequalities in global scientific capacity.

Item Type:	Article
Additional Information:	© 2025 The Author(s)
Divisions:	Geography and Environment
Subjects:	G Geography. Anthropology. Recreation > G Geography (General) H Social Sciences > HT Communities. Classes. Races H Social Sciences > HC Economic History and Conditions
Date Deposited:	01 Dec 2025 15:33
Last Modified:	22 Dec 2025 15:15
URI:	http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/id/eprint/130377

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