The comprehension of the mechanisms behind the mobility of skilled workers is of paramount importance for policy making. The lacking nature of official measurements motivates the use of digital trace data extracted from ORCID public records. We use such data to investigate European regions, studied at NUTS2 level, over the time horizon of 2009 to 2020. We present a novel perspective where regions roles are dictated by the overall activity of the research community, contradicting the common brain drain interpretation of the phenomenon. We find that a high mobility is usually correlated with strong university prestige, high magnitude of investments and an overall good schooling level in a region.

翻译：理解高技能人才流动背后的机制对于政策制定至关重要。官方统计数据的缺失促使我们利用从ORCID公共记录中提取的数字追踪数据。我们利用这些数据研究了2009年至2020年间欧洲NUTS2层面的区域情况。我们提出了一种新视角：区域角色由研究群体的整体活动决定，这与常见的"人才流失"现象解释相悖。研究发现，高流动性通常与区域内的大学声誉、投资规模及整体教育水平呈正相关关系。