Do senior faculty members produce fewer research publications than their younger colleagues? Evidence from Ph.D. granting institutions in the United States

Abstract

The aging of the professoriate throughout the end of the twentieth century and the early years of the 2000′s (both before and after the end of mandatory retirement in the United States, ca. 1994) has become a source of concern for some scholars and research administrators, who posit that the “greying” of the academy results in lower research activity and a decline in scientific advancement. Some published opinions concur that senior scholars’ research programs do not keep pace with those of their younger colleagues, but little quantitative evidence has been presented to evaluate that claim. In this study, we quantify senior faculty publication activity in six broad fields, comparing their publication rates to their younger colleagues across four modes of knowledge dissemination: journal articles, conference proceedings, books, and book chapters. Career publication activity does not follow the “peak and decline” pattern described in earlier studies. In most fields, journal article publication rates do not decline substantively with age (and in some cases article publication rates are higher among senior scholars), conference proceeding publication rates tend to decline with age, while book and chapter publication rates increase markedly with age. Overall, senior scholars maintain publishing activity levels and tend to shift their focus to the development and evolution of ideas through the publication of longer-format works as books and book chapters.

More journal articles and fewer books: Publication practices in the social sciences in the 2010’s

“…Likewise, in every discipline except Educational Psychology, the oldest cohort (SCR) had the greatest participation in book publication. These findings are broadly consistent with our previous analysis of publishing behavior among age cohorts [ 23 : Fig 6], where senior scholars were observed to publish more books than their younger colleagues. Table 5 also shows that rates of participation in journal article publication increased in all age cohorts in all disciplines, with three exceptions: SCRs in International Affairs and Development, Public Administration, and Public Policy all showed non-significant decreases in journal article publication participation.…”

“…The AcA database includes the year of terminal degree for each faculty member (typically the Ph.D., but sometimes MBA, MFA, etc. ), from which we defined three academic age cohorts following [ 23 ]: early career researchers (ECR) earned their terminal degree 0–10 years before the year in which the database was compiled; mid-career researchers (MCR) earned their degree between 11 and 30 years before the database compilation year; and senior career researchers (SCR) earned their degree 31 or more years before the database compilation year. For each discipline, year, and age cohort we calculated the number of articles per faculty, the number of books per faculty, and the number of books per article.…”

How Productive Are Economics and Finance PhDs?

“…Recent studies on research productivity of individuals in various disciplines have challenged the traditional notion of a peak and decline in research output. For example, Savage and Olejniczak (2021) find that senior scholars maintain steady or even increased publication rates. Alchokr et al (2022) discover that the research productivity of software-engineering academics reaches its peak after around 15 years of experience and remains relatively stable for another 15 years before declining.…”

A Comparative Longitudinal Study of Research Outputs in EPSCoR versus Non-EPSCoR States

“…We mined the Academic Analytics, LLC (AcA) commercial database for the names, departmental affiliation(s), and year of terminal degree of tenured and tenure-track scholars (Assistant Professor, Associate Professor, and Professor titles) employed by Ph.D.-granting universities in the United States. AcA data have been demonstrated suitable for academic scholarship in several studies (e.g., Bostwick & Weinberg, 2022;Ginther & Kahn, 2021;Obloj & Zenger, 2022;Savage & Olejniczak, 2021;Sherman & Tookes, 2022) 1).…”