Crossing the hurdle: the determinants of individual scientific performance (original) (raw)

2014, Scientometrics

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.

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Comparison of research productivity of Italian and Norwegian professors and universities

ArXiv, 2019

This is the first ever attempt of application in a country other than Italy of a research efficiency indicator (FSS), to assess and compare the performance of professors and universities, within and between countries. A special attention has been devoted to the presentation of the methodology developed to set up a common field classification scheme of professors, and to overcome the limited availability of comparable input data. Results of the comparison between countries, carried out in the 2011-2015 period, show similar average performances of professors, but noticeable differences in the distributions, whereby Norwegian professors are more concentrated in the tails. Norway shows notable higher performance in Mathematics and Earth and Space Sciences, while Italy in Biomedical Research and Engineering.

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The measurement of Italian universities' research productivity by a non parametric-bibliometric methodology

Scientometrics, 2008

This paper presents a methodology for measuring the technical efficiency of research activities. It is based on the application of data envelopment analysis to bibliometric data on the Italian university system. For that purpose, different input values (research personnel by level and extra funding) and output values (quantity, quality and level of contribution to actual scientific publications) are considered. Our study aims at overcoming some of the limitations connected to the methodologies that have so far been proposed in the literature, in particular by surveying the scientific production of universities by authors’ name.

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Who are More Successful Researchers? An Analysis of University Teachers Research Productivity

Global Social Sciences Review, 2019

Key objective of the study was to assess the research productivity of university teachers and to analyze the effect of demographic variables (gender, faculty, designation, age and experience) on their research productivity to ultimately explore the profile of successful researchers. Data regarding demographic variables and research productivity in last three years were collected from a sample of 200 faculty members from four public sector universities in Faisalabad, Pakistan. Findings revealed that university faculty is striving hard to contribute in the field of research. Furthermore, demographic variables (gender, faculty and designation) affect their research productivity in favor of male teachers, teachers from physical sciences and teachers with higher designation. Age and experience are not associated with many indicators of RP or they are weakly positively correlated with number of research articles and published books. Educational implications for faculty members and other s...

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Women academics and research productivity: an international comparison

Gender and Education, 2015

In the prestige economy of higher education, research productivity is highly prized. Previous research indicates, however, a gender gap with respect to research output. This gap is often explained by reference to familial status and responsibilities. In this article, we examine the research productivity gender gap from an international perspective by undertaking a gendered analysis of the Changing Academic Profession Survey. We suggest that family is not, in all cases, operating as a form of negative equity in the prestige economy of higher education. In addition, we argue that an over-reliance on an explanatory framework that positions family-related variables as central to the research productivity gender gap might well be drawing our attention from significant structural and systemic discriminatory practices within the profession.

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