Figures

International student mobility

Measuring international student mobility is difficult, for there are different indicators of what makes a student international. We have decided to count as international students with foreign citizenship as well as prior education abroad. This definition has the advantage of excluding all those students who do not have Dutch citizenship but who did their prior education in the Netherlands (most notably immigrants). However, the definition also excludes some Dutch students, namely those who did their prior education abroad. The figures do not distinguish between Bachelor and Master degree programmes.

Research in international perspective

International figures on research demonstrate that the Dutch research universities publish extensively, certainly considering the relatively low overall number of researchers in the Netherlands (below the EU-25 average). The Netherlands has the highest ratio of number of publications to number of researchers, followed by Sweden and the United Kingdom. In terms of number of publications per one million inhabitants, the Netherlands occupies the fourth position behind Sweden, Denmark and Finland. Dutch research competes internationally not only in terms of quantity but also quality: Dutch research scores highly on citation impact.

Number of academic publications per million residents and number of researchers per 1000 members of the working population

Share of world publications

Trends in citation impact scores

The Dutch research universities do very well where publications and patents are concerned. The Netherlands has more patents than the United Kingdom even though the number of publications per one million inhabitants is roughly the same in the two countries. While the Netherlands, the United States and Denmark have about the same number of patents, the Netherlands has relatively less publications than Denmark, but more than the US.

Triadic patent families per one million inhabitants versus publications per one million inhabitants

More figures on excellent research in the Netherlands

 

International research cooperation

Dutch research universities are internationally well connected and attach great importance to cooperation. This is reflected in the amount of international research cooperation and co-publications in the Netherlands. 45% of all publications in the Netherlands are international co-publications (2003-2006). Over the last 15 years, Dutch co-publications with the United Kingdom, the US and Germany has increased by 100% or more. The average citation impact scores of international co-publications in the Netherlands exceed the global average of 1.0 by far.
For these and more data on international research cooperation at Dutch research universities, please consult the Dutch report "Science and Technology Indicators 2008" and the English-language summary by the Netherlands Observatory of Science and Technology.