Developing human capital and research capacity: Science policies promoting brain gain

• Portugal shows a notable process of brain gain over the period 1970–2010.
• The co-evolution of human capital formation and institutional capacity building leads to brain gain.
• Performance-based research funding based on national assessments builds capacity.
• Science policies emphasizing advanced qualification of individuals drive modern societies.

Science policies emphasizing the advanced qualification of human resources, together with democratizing access to science and internationalizing the science base, are shown to help build the conditions needed to drive brain gain over time.Exploring a new set of data for the period 1970–2010 in Portugal, this paper focuses on the analysis of flows of doctorates, with the ultimate goal of helping to promote the absorptive capacity that emerging regions and countries worldwide need to acquire to learn how to use science for economic and social development. It shows a notable process of brain gain by the end of this period and, above all, it provides a dynamic approach to the cumulative process of building knowledge-based societies. The results show the need to consider the co-evolution of brain gain, brain drain and brain circulation over time and space. In addition, they suggest the importance of certain major counter-intuitive policy instruments to facilitate the co-evolution of human capital formation and research capacity building. In the case of Portugal, these instruments have included a centralized program of research grants, research careers independent of traditional academic career tracks, and a diversified system of funding research units and institutions based on research assessments through international peer reviews.