Aliakbar Akbaritabar (Ali)

@Akbaritabar
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Assistant Professor of Computational Social Science at the University of Rostock and MPIDR | Computational Social Science | Migration | Social Networks | Scientometrics | Sociology of Science | More active on blusky: https://bsky.app/profile/akbaritabar.bsky.social and LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/akbaritabar/
Public archive of presentationshttps://akbaritabar.github.io
GitHubhttps://github.com/akbaritabar
Google Scholarhttps://scholar.google.com/citations?user=zufgVroAAAAJ&hl=en
ORCIDhttps://orcid.org/0000-0003-3828-1533
Aliakbar Akbaritabar (Ali)2d ago
Aliakbar Akbaritabar (Ali)Jun 2

The Scholarly Migration Database 2.0 is now online!

Just in time for the European Population Conference 2026 in Bologna!

It is a great pleasure to share that we now include global bilateral flows and rates disaggregated by gender and fields of science, at both the internal (subnational) and international levels!

See the working paper here:
https://dx.doi.org/10.4054/MPIDR-WP-2026-029

Access the data on Zenodo:
https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.20487917

And visit the website here:
https://www.scholarlymigration.org/

@MPIDR

Aliakbar Akbaritabar (Ali)Jun 2

The Scholarly Migration Database 2.0 is now online!

Just in time for the European Population Conference 2026 in Bologna!

It is a great pleasure to share that we now include global bilateral flows and rates disaggregated by gender and fields of science, at both the internal (subnational) and international levels!

See the working paper here:
https://dx.doi.org/10.4054/MPIDR-WP-2026-029

Access the data on Zenodo:
https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.20487917

And visit the website here:
https://www.scholarlymigration.org/

@MPIDR

Aliakbar Akbaritabar (Ali)May 31

This is a very nice example of using the Scholarly Migration Database alongside other data to answer a societally relevant question.

Asgari, Y., et al. Arab Spring’s impact on science through the lens of scholarly attention, funding, and migration. Scientometrics (2026). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-026-05615-z

Arab Spring’s impact on science through the lens of scholarly attention, funding, and migration - Scientometrics

The 2010–2011 Arab Spring reverberated far beyond politics, reshaping how the Middle East and North Africa region (MENA) is studied. Analyzing 3.6 million Scopus-indexed articles published between 2002 and 2019, we find that mentions of ten of these countries in titles or abstracts rose significantly after 2011 relative to the global baseline, with Egypt receiving the greatest attention in the region. We link this surge to two intertwined mechanisms: an increase in research funding directed to the MENA region and the emigration of researchers who continued publishing about their countries of origin. Our analysis reveals that Saudi Arabia has emerged as a regional hub for research on the target countries, providing funding and attracting scholars and thereby playing a significant role in shaping the scientific narrative on the region. These findings demonstrate how political upheaval can reshape global knowledge flows by altering who studies whom, with what resources, and in which disciplines.

SpringerLink
Show threadAliakbar Akbaritabar (Ali)May 29
This project was made possible by the Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research and specifically the 2024 round of the Population and Social Data Science Summer Incubator Program https://www.incubator.demogr.mpg.de/
Summer Incubator Program - Start

The Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research (MPIDR) is organizing and hosting the Population and Social Data Science Summer Incubator Program, a 3-month research visit for a diverse group of PhD and master students.

Summer Incubator Program
Show threadAliakbar Akbaritabar (Ali)May 29

Further, it has not been clear if scholars move to where they had prior collaborators during internal (subnational) or international mobility, or both, or neither.

In a new article published in PNAS Nexus by Alexandra Rottenkolber Ola Megahed Ali, Gergely Mónus, Jiaxuan Li, Jisu Kim, Daniela Perrotta, and myself, we address these questions and also look at institutional prestige.

The Open Access paper is here:
https://doi.org/10.1093/pnasnexus/pgag168

Aliakbar Akbaritabar (Ali)May 29

Exciting new contributions on scientific mobility and collaboration!

The literature on scientific mobility and collaboration has long been paradoxical about whether scholars form collaboration ties before moving to an institution, or if they start collaborating after relocating.

Show threadAliakbar Akbaritabar (Ali)Apr 26

In addition, they submitted their final assignment using a private GitHub repository as well. It was nice to see it working to onboard them to doing version control.

Now, for this semester, I have converted my materials to an "Interactive Course on Basics of Git, GitHub, and Version Control"

You are welcome to try it here. It allows you to leave feedback at the end of the interactive process. The only requirement is to have a free GitHub profile or sign-up for one:

https://github.com/akbaritabar/Git-GitHub-Version-Control-Interactive-Self-paced-Course

GitHub - akbaritabar/Git-GitHub-Version-Control-Interactive-Self-paced-Course: This repository contains a self-paced interactive course on basics of Git, GitHub, version control, and reproducible collaboration. No prior knowledge is assumed. The only requirement is to have a GitHub account. You can Sign up here: https://github.com/signup?.

This repository contains a self-paced interactive course on basics of Git, GitHub, version control, and reproducible collaboration. No prior knowledge is assumed. The only requirement is to have a ...

GitHub
Aliakbar Akbaritabar (Ali)Apr 26

What is Git, GitHub, and version control? Why should we use them?

In each of my courses in the past three semesters, I have spent the first sessions answering these questions by showing students the basics of them.

To motivate students to learn version control and how it helps with reproducibility of research, I have provided the course materials via GitHub repositories.

==>

Aliakbar Akbaritabar (Ali)Apr 17

RE: https://mastodon.social/@Akbaritabar/116381943574078256

Resharing to say:
Comments and suggestions for topics and literature to add are very wellcome!

Show threadAliakbar Akbaritabar (Ali)Apr 10

If you saw your publications reviewed in these materials, it means I have enjoyed reading them and wanted my students to learn about them.

Why am I sharing these?
This semester, I am teaching a course on "Introduction to Demographic Methods" and have benefited immensely from publicly available materials by others and this is my thank you to those who have shared them publicly.