The Productivity of Top Researchers: A Semi-Nonparametric Approach

Cortés, Lina M.; Perote, Javier; Mora–Valencia, Andrés

doi:10.2139/ssrn.2750136

Cited by 7 publications

(14 citation statements)

References 18 publications

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“…The relative importance of scientists in the right tail of the output distribution—increasingly termed stars recently—has endured over time (Agrawal et al 2017 : 1). The superstar effect refers to markets (“relatively small numbers of people earn enormous amounts of money and dominate the activities in which they engage” Rosen 1981 : 845), and the Matthew effect (Cole and Cole 1973 ; Merton 1968 ) refers to the science system: a small number of scholars produce most of the works, attract huge numbers of citations, hold prestigious academic positions, and form the disciplines’ identity (Cortés et al 2016 ; Serenko et al 2011 ). For Robert K. Merton and Sherwin Rosen, performance determines rewards.…”

Section: Theoretical Frameworkmentioning

confidence: 99%

High research productivity in vertically undifferentiated higher education systems: Who are the top performers?

Kwiek¹

2018

Scientometrics

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The growing scholarly interest in research top performers comes from the growing policy interest in research top performance itself. A question emerges: what makes someone a top performer? In this paper, the upper 10% of Polish academics in terms of research productivity are studied, and predictors of entering this class are sought. In the science system (and Poland follows global patterns), a small number of scholars produce most of the works and attract huge numbers of citations. Performance determines rewards, and small differences in talent translate into a disproportionate level of success, leading to inequalities in resources, research outcomes, and rewards. Top performers are studied here through a bivariate analysis of their working time distribution and their academic role orientation, as well as through a model approach. Odds ratio estimates with logistic regression of being highly productive Polish academics are presented. Consistently across major clusters of academic disciplines, the tiny minority of 10% of academics produces about half (44.7%) of all Polish publications (48.0% of publications in English and 57.2% of internationally co-authored publications). The mean research productivity of top performers across major clusters is on average 7.3 times higher than that of the other academics, and in terms of internationally co-authored publications, 12.07 times higher. High inequality was observed: the average research productivity distribution is highly skewed with a long tail on the right not only for all Polish academics but also for top performers. The class of top performers is as internally stratified as that of their lower-performing colleagues. Separate regression models for all academics, science, technology, engineering and mathematics academics, and social sciences and humanities academics are built based on a large national sample (2525 usable observations), and implications are discussed.

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Section: Theoretical Frameworkmentioning

confidence: 99%

High research productivity in vertically undifferentiated higher education systems: Who are the top performers?

Kwiek¹

2018

Scientometrics

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“…The superstar effect refers to markets where ‘relatively small numbers of people earn enormous amounts of money and dominate the activities in which they engage’ (Rosen, , p. 845). This is associated with the Matthew effect (Cole & Cole, ; Merton, ), in which a small number of scholars in the science system produce most of the published research; with more citations and prestigious academic positions, they define their discipline's identity (Cortés, Mora‐Valencia, & Perote, ; Serenko et al, ). According to Merton () and Rosen (), performance determines reward.…”

Section: Theoretical Backgroundmentioning

confidence: 99%

Social stratification in Higher Education: What it means at the micro‐level of the individual academic scientist

Kwiek¹

2019

Higher Education Quarterly

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The academic profession is internally divided as never before. This cross‐national comparative analysis of stratification in Higher Education is based on a sample of European academic scientists (N = 8,466) from universities in 11 countries. The analysis identifies three types of stratification: academic performance stratification, academic salary stratification, and international research stratification. This emergent stratification of the global scientific community is predominantly research‐based, and internationalisation in research is at its centre; prestige‐driven, internationally competitive, and central to academic recognition systems, research is the single most stratifying factor in Higher Education at the level of the individual scientist today. These stratification processes pull the various segments of the academic profession in different directions. The study analyses highly productive academics (‘research top performers’), highly paid academics (‘academic top earners’), and highly internationalised academics (‘research internationalists’) and explores the implications for individual scientists.

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“…These distributions have been applied in very diverse fields in which precision in measuring distribution tails is important for correctly measuring the occurrence of extreme values (for examples of applications in thermodynamics, astronomy, finance and scientometrics, see Kuhs [24], Blinnikov and Moessner [25], Mauleon and Perote [26] and Cortés et al [27], respectively).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Measuring Firm Size Distribution with Semi-Nonparametric Densities

2017

Self Cite

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In this article, we propose a new methodology based on a (log) semi-nonparametric (log-SNP) distribution that nests the lognormal and enables better fits in the upper tail of the distribution through the introduction of new parameters. We test the performance of the lognormal and log-SNP distributions capturing firm size, measured through a sample of US firms in [2004][2005][2006][2007][2008][2009][2010][2011][2012][2013][2014][2015]. Taking different levels of aggregation by type of economic activity, our study shows that the log-SNP provides a better fit of the firm size distribution. We also formally introduce the multivariate log-SNP distribution, which encompasses the multivariate lognormal, to analyze the estimation of the joint distribution of the value of the firm's assets and sales. The results suggest that sales are a better firm size measure, as indicated by other studies in the literature.

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The Productivity of Top Researchers: A Semi-Nonparametric Approach

Cited by 7 publications

References 18 publications

High research productivity in vertically undifferentiated higher education systems: Who are the top performers?

High research productivity in vertically undifferentiated higher education systems: Who are the top performers?

Social stratification in Higher Education: What it means at the micro‐level of the individual academic scientist

Measuring Firm Size Distribution with Semi-Nonparametric Densities

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