Research Productivity in Academia: A Comparative Study of the Sciences, Social Sciences and Humanities.

Though a significant number of studies of scholarly productivity have accumulated in the past decade, the majority have focused on limited samples of specialists in one or only a few scientific disciplines, making it difficult to generalize findings across dissimilar academic disciplines. This paper tests a model incorporating both academic and nonacademic factors as determinants of productivity with samples of physical and biological scientists, social scientists, and humanists taken from the 1972-73 American Council on Education survey of J'aculty at U.S. institutions of higher learning. We find considerable variation in the process determining productivity both across the broad disciplinary categories as well as within categories when article and book productivity are compared. We also examine the relative influence of the disciplinary context and attributes of scholars on productivity. Our evidence suggests that the decisive edge that physical and biological scientists enjoy over social scientists and humanists in article productivity is largely the result of the nature of work or a favorable disciplinary milieu, while the lower rate of productivity among humanists is more heavily determined by their attributes.

[1]  K. Galway,et al.  The Woman Ph.d.: A Recent Profile , 1967 .

[2]  P. Allison,et al.  Productivity Differences Among Scientists: Evidence for Accumulative Advantage , 1974 .

[3]  Leland J. Axelson,et al.  Differences in Productivity of Doctorates in Sociology , 1959 .

[4]  N. Babchuk,et al.  Professor or Producer: The Two Faces of Academic Man , 1962 .

[5]  J. R. Cole,et al.  Scientific output and recognition: a study in the operation of the reward system in science. , 1967, American sociological review.

[6]  A. Bayer.  Teaching faculty in academe : 1972-73 , 1973 .

[7]  P. Allison,et al.  Entrance into the Academic Career , 1979 .

[8]  Lowell L. Hargens,et al.  A Note On Standardized Coefficients as Structural Parameters , 1976 .

[9]  Frank Clemente,et al.  Quality of Department of Doctoral Training and Research Productivity. , 1974 .

[10]  A. Bayer,et al.  Some Correlates of a Citation Measure of Productivity in Science , 1966 .

[11]  R. Merton,et al.  Patterns of evaluation in science: Institutionalisation, structure and functions of the referee system , 1971 .

[12]  Productivity Among Scientists: A Replication and Elaboration , 1975 .

[13]  The Work Habits of Eminent Scholars , 1974 .

[14]  Stephen Cole,et al.  Social Stratification in Science. , 1973 .

[15]  Janice Beyer Lodahl,et al.  The Structure of Scientific Fields and the Functioning of University Graduate Departments. , 1972 .

[16]  J. S. Long,et al.  Productivity and Academic Position in the Scientific Career , 1978 .

[17]  B. Reskin.  Scientific Productivity and the Reward Structure of Science , 1977 .

[18]  Charles J. Andersen,et al.  A rating of graduate programs , 1970 .

[19]  T. Kuhn.  The Structure of Scientific Revolutions 2nd edition , 1970 .

[20]  Lowell L. Hargens,et al.  Productivity and Reproductivity: Fertility and Professional Achievement among Research Scientists , 1978 .

[21]  Scaling the Ivory Tower: Merit and Its Limits in Academic Careers , 1976 .

[22]  Jae-On Kim,et al.  Standardized and Unstandardized Coefficients in Causal Analysis , 1976 .

[23]  Paul D. Allison,et al.  Problems in Estimating Measurement Error From Panel Data , 1976 .

[24]  J. G. Manis,et al.  Some Academic Influences Upon Publication Productivity , 1951 .

[25]  B. N. Meltzer,et al.  The Productivity of Social Scientists , 1949, American Journal of Sociology.

[26]  J. Gaston.  The Reward System in British Science , 1970 .