Research productivity in the internet era

Abstract

The present study investigated the relationship between the use of different internet applications and research productivity, controlling for other influences on the latter. The control variables included dummies for country, discipline, gender and type of organization of the respondent; as well as variables for age, recognition, the degree of society-related and careerrelated motivation for research, and the size of the collaboration network. Simple variance analyses and more complex negative binomial hurdle models point to a positive relationship between internet use (for personal communication, information retrieval and information dissemination) and research productivity. However, the results should be interpreted with caution as it was not possible to test the role of the internet against other pre-internet tools which fulfil the same functions. Thus instance it may not be the use of e-mail per se, but the degree of communicating with colleagues that makes a productive scientist.

Predicting scientific research output at the University of KwaZulu-Natal

“…Similar studies have been conducted, mainly on US data (for example Xie and Shauman 3 , Aksnes et al 4 and Kyvik and Teigen 5 ), in which it was found that for almost every age group in their respective data sets, men publish more than women. Barjak 6 , Gonzalez-Brambila and Veloso 7 and Kyvik 8 have found that research productivity tends to increase with age, reaching a peak before tapering off towards retirement. What distinguishes this study from those mentioned above is that it analyses a set of per annum based publication counts for all members of staff at UKZN.…”

Publication rate expressed by age, gender and academic position – A large-scale analysis of Norwegian academic staff

“…The average production of publications increases with age and reaches a peak at some point during the career and then declines (see for instance Aksnes et al, 2011;Barjak, 2006;Cole, 1979;Gonzalez-Brambila & Veloso, 2007;Kyvik, 1990). However, Kyvik (1990) also noted that the researchers with more recognition keep publishing frequently after their less-recognised colleagues reached their peak.…”

Romanian scholarly productivity: recent history and recommendations

“…Internet use and access to electronic databases were both associated with increased productivity for 1400 scientists in seven European countries (Barjak, 2006). Electronic resources were associated with increased publication rates across fields in Finland (Vakkari, 2008), and for physicists in India (Gupta & Dhawan, 2009).…”