For East Europeans, Open Door To West Is A Revolving One

Researchers find visits increasingly necessary for career advancement, high-tech lab work, and hard currency earnings. As pluralism and democracy move to replace communist rule in Eastern Europe, researchers in the West can expect to see a steady increase in the number of scientists traveling to Western Europe, the United Kingdom, and the United States. "It seems to me that there are three key issues: one is freedom of travel, and in all of those [Eastern Europe] countries the travel barriers

Written byCarole Gan

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Researchers find visits increasingly necessary for career advancement, high-tech lab work, and hard currency earnings.

As pluralism and democracy move to replace communist rule in Eastern Europe, researchers in the West can expect to see a steady increase in the number of scientists traveling to Western Europe, the United Kingdom, and the United States.

"It seems to me that there are three key issues: one is freedom of travel, and in all of those [Eastern Europe] countries the travel barriers will be relaxed," says one official at the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) who is involved in foreign exchanges. "We've already seen it in Poland and Hungary. But that has to be balanced with the lack of access to hard currency, which will be a constraint, both for international cooperation and for upgrading the laboratories. Coupled with those two are the worries about the brain drain."

While some researchers have ...

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