Daniel Lemire's blog

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Research productivity: what matters?

I stumbled upon this nice paper Social-Organizational Characteristics of Work and Publication Productivity among Academic Scientists in Doctoral-Granting Departments (Journal of Higher Education, 2007). I skimmed it and here are some sketchy conclusions:

  • Being a man and having lots of male graduate students is highly correlated with productivity.
  • Collaboration is strongly correlated with productivity. However, it is difficult to say whether there is any causality. It could be that when you are productive, more people seek to work with you.
  • Working on several projects is strongly correlated with productivity. However, is there any causal relationship? Maybe when you are more productive, you take on more projects?
  • Work climate and location only matters moderately or not at all.