Biological age is an important sociodemographic factor in studies on academic careers (research productivity, scholarly impact, and collaboration patterns). It is assumed that the academic age, or the time elapsed from the first publication, is a good proxy for biological age. In this study, we analyze the limitations of the proxy in academic career studies, using as an example the entire population of Polish academic scientists visible in the last decade in global science and holding at least a PhD (N = 20,569). The proxy works well for science, technology, engineering, mathematics, and medicine (STEMM) disciplines; however, for non-STEMM disciplines (particularly for humanities and social sciences), it has a dramatically worse performance. This negative conclusion is particularly important for systems that have only become recently visible in global academic journals. The micro-level data suggest a delayed participation of social scientists and humanists in global science networks, with practical implications for predicting biological age from academic age. We calculate correlation coefficients, present contingency analysis of academic career stages with academic positions and age groups, and create a linear multivariate regression model. Our research suggests that in scientifically developing countries, academic age as a proxy for biological age must be used more cautiously than in advanced countries: ideally, it must be used only for STEMM disciplines.
翻译:生物年龄是学术职业研究中一个重要的社会人口因素(研究生产率、学术影响和合作模式),假定学龄或从第一份出版物到来的时间是生物学时代的良好代谢。在本研究中,我们分析学术职业研究代理的局限性,以过去十年来全球科学中可见的波兰全体学术科学家为例,并持有至少博士学位(N=20 569)。 代用系数对科学、技术、工程、数学和医学(STEMM)学科运作良好;然而,对于非STEMM学科(特别是人文和社会科学)而言,其表现却差得多。这一负面结论对于最近才在全球学术期刊中出现的系统尤其重要。微观层面的数据表明,社会科学家和人类学家对全球科学网络的参与延迟,对预测学龄的生物年龄具有实际影响。我们计算相关系数,提出学术职业阶段与学术职位和年龄组的应急分析,并创建线性多变回归模型。我们的研究显示,在科学发展中国家,学术时代作为生物时代的代代代用方法必须比生物时代的代用得更谨慎。