This longitudinal study explores persistence in research productivity over time. We examine the trajectories of the academic careers of 2,326 current full professors in 14 STEMM disciplines, studying their lifetime biographical histories and publication histories. Every full professor is compared in terms of productivity classes (top, middle, bottom) with their peers at earlier career stages. We used prestige-normalized productivity in which more weight is given to articles in high-impact than in low-impact journals, recognizing the highly stratified nature of academic science. Our results show that membership in top productivity classes is to a large extent determined by being in these classes earlier. Half of the current top productive full professors belonged to top productivity classes throughout their academic careers. Half of the top productive assistant professors continued as top productive associate professors, and half of the top productive associate professors continued as top productive full professors (52.6% and 50.8%). Top-to-bottom and bottom-to-top transitions in productivity classes occurred marginally. The combination of biographical and demographic data with raw Scopus publication data from the past 50 years (N=1 million) made it possible to assign all full professors retrospective to different productivity, promotion age, and promotion speed classes. In logistic regression models, two powerful predictors of belonging to the top productivity class for full professors were being highly productive as assistant professors and as associate professors (increasing the odds by 180% and 360%). Neither gender nor age (biological or academic) emerged as statistically significant.
翻译:这一纵向研究探索了长期研究生产力的持久性。我们研究了14个STEMM学科中2 326名现任全职教授的学术生涯轨迹,研究了他们一生的生平史和出版史。每个全科教授都以生产力班(上、中、下)与其早期职业阶段的同龄人进行比较。我们使用了声望调整式的生产率,在高影响力文章中比低影响力期刊文章更重视高影响力文章,承认学术科学高度分层性质。我们的结果显示,在高级生产力班中,最高级的2 326名现任全科教授在很大程度上是由这些班中的更早学生决定的。目前有一半高生产力的全科普斯高级教授在其整个学术生涯中属于最高生产力班。一半的高级生产性助理教授继续担任高级生产性副教授,半数高级生产性副教授继续担任高生产力教授(52.6%和50.8%)。在生产力班中,自上至下和从下至上到上层文章的转变,从历史和人口数据与过去50年的原始Scopus出版数据(100万新)的结合在很大程度上由这些班决定。使所有高级生教授都有可能将所有正式教授改派教授改成为高生产力,作为高级教授,作为高级教授,作为高级教授,作为高级教授,作为高级的推后期的推后期推至高级的推至高级教授,作为高级教授,作为高级教授,作为高级的推,作为高级的升级的推,作为高级教授,作为高级的推,作为高级的推,作为高级推,作为高级推,升升升的推,升的推,作为高级的推,升升至升升升升的推。