The purpose of this article is to determine what can we learn about the changing demographics of scientific personnel around the world and over time using available global bibliometric data sources. We wanted to see how useful global data could be for analyzing the scientific workforce. We tested how the demographic transformation of the global scientific profession can be measured using new data sources, thus transcending the traditional approach in which national statistics from national statistical offices are aggregated to a higher level, as in the case of the scientific workforce databases produced by the OECD, UNESCO and the European Union (Eurostat).