Scientific Productivity and Academic Promotion: A Study on French and Italian Physicists (original) (raw)

Crossing the hurdle: the determinants of individual scientific performance

Scientometrics, 2014

An original cross-sectional dataset referring to a medium-sized Italian university is implemented in order to analyze the determinants of scientific research production at individual level. The dataset includes 942 permanent researchers of various scientific sectors for a 3-year time-span (2008–2010). Three different indicators—based on the number of publications and/or citations—are considered as response variables. The corresponding distributions are highly skewed and display an excess of zero-valued observations. In this setting, the goodness-of-fit of several Poisson mixture regression models are explored by assuming an extensive set of explanatory variables. As to the personal observable characteristics of the researchers, the results emphasize the age effect and the gender productivity gap—as previously documented by existing studies. Analogously, the analysis confirms that productivity is strongly affected by the publication and citation practices adopted in different scientific disciplines. The empirical evidence on the connection between teaching and research activities suggests that no univocal substitution or complementarity thesis can be claimed: a major teaching load does not affect the odds to be a non-active researcher and does not significantly reduce the number of publications for active researchers. In addition, new evidence emerges on the effect of researchers administrative tasks—which seem to be negatively related with researcher’s productivity—and on the composition of departments. Researchers’ productivity is apparently enhanced by operating in department filled with more administrative and technical staff, and it is not significantly affected by the composition of the department in terms of senior/junior researchers.

Changes in the governance of the Italian Higher Education system

The research activity of the doctoral course focuses on two main themes. The first part analyses the changes in the governance of the higher education system and the role of funding and evaluation as steering tools of research activity. The second part analyses methods, tools and results of the Italian research evaluation processes. The first theme is developed within the Italian research group in the frame of the project “Steering of Universities” (SUN), funded by the Prime Network of Excellence. The SUN involves eight research groups of seven European Countries. The project seeks, through a “multi-national and comparative approach to the study of steering problems of HERI, to: 1. explore how and to what extent the Higher Education and Research institutions’ governance is changing at the national levels, and 2. explore how and to what extent cross-national convergence towards the EHEA and ERA can be expected” (PRIME, 2005). The research focuses on the Italian and Dutch contexts, with case studies developed in three universities and three disciplines. The second part is developed through the analysis of the first national research evaluation process (VTR) promoted in Italy by the Ministry in 2004 and developed by CIVR.

Segregation or homologation? Gender differences in recent Italian economic thought

MPRA working paper, 2017

This paper aims to contribute to the analysis of recent changes in Italian economic thought by examining them from a gender perspective. Following a popular international trend, the use of bibliometric indicators for the purposes of personnel selection has been introduced in Italy, creating a more competitive environment heavily founded on rigid standardized indexes of “scientific productivity”. In this context, recent studies analyze gender differences by considering the willingness to enter competition. By contrast, we aim at describing what were the strategies adopted by men and women economists in terms of research fields, at different stages of their careers. We find that women progressively have converged to the research interests of their male colleagues. Specifically, we find that the decrease in non-mainstream publications, in particular in the fields of heterodox approaches and history of economic thought, is larger among female economists. Systematic follow-up is essential, in particular the creation of specific committee or observatory embodying a gender perspective in all aspects of the academic and research activity in economics in Italy.

Elite Scientists and the Global Brain Drain

2007

There are signs – one is world university league tables – that people increasingly think globally when choosing the university in which they wish to work and study. This paper is an exploration of data on the international brain drain. We study highly-cited physicists, highly-cited bio-scientists, and assistant professors of economics. First, we demonstrate that talented researchers are being systematically

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