2015年《Research Policy》上刊发了一篇有意思的论文：How do alumni faculty behave in research collaboration? An analysis of Chang Jiang Scholars in China。这篇论文由三位中国大陆学者合著，讨论的是一个能引起国际关注的话题：人才回流。

   中国的人才回流无非有两种选择：其一，回母校；其二，不回母校。回母校可能意味着更多的人脉，更多的学术资源，不回母校很可能会去一个人生地不熟的机构，所有的人脉与学术资源只能从零开始。研究假设之一是“与非母校的学者相比，母校的学者更倾向于利用过去在该校建立的人脉开展学术合作”，而以长江学者为例的实证研究发现结果正好与研究假设相反：非母校的学者比母校的学者更倾向于寻求校内合作。

   采用非结构化的访谈的方式，我从周围若干同事那里寻求对这一结论的解释。有意思的是，回母校的访谈对象几乎一致认为，他们太清楚同事们过去的恩恩怨怨了，当然不会去触碰他人的雷区，因此选择合作对象时，更倾向于选择校外的学者。而非母校的访谈对象为了拓展校内人脉，倾向于从合作发表论文开始。

   这篇论文从回流人才的合作倾向揭示出：高校的人际关系其实很紧张。当然，论文还有其他重要的结论，不过不在我的关心范围之内，如有兴趣，可查看全文。附摘要如下：

Recruiting overseas alumni as faculty within their Chinese alma mater has become a common phenomenon in Chinese universities. This paper studies how the alumni linkage, the connection betweenalumni faculty members and their alma mater, influences the individual collaborative behaviour ofreturnee scholars. The results show that alumni faculty are inclined to conduct less intra-institutional col-laboration than non－alumni faculty, and the impact of alumni linkage on a scholar’s propensity towardsinternational collaboration is not significant. Both results are inconsistent with expectations. The impor-tance of local networking and other factors in Chinese research culture may cause returnee scholars toexhibit such unexpected behaviours in collaborative propensities. Another central finding is that alumnifaculty members tend to publish in journals with an average greater impact factor than non-alumni faculty. We therefore argue that alumni linkage has played an important role in bringing about the prosocialbehaviour of alumni faculty by strengthening their motivation to pursue quality research, and that thestrength of a returnee scholar’s local academic network also has a great impact on their tendency towardshigh impact research.