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In an effort to encourage self-regulation of the astronomy job market, I examine the supply of, and demand for, astronomers over time. On the supply side, I document the production rate of Ph.D. astronomers from 1970 to 2006 using the UMI…

The Physics GRE is currently a required element of the graduate admissions process in nearly all U.S. astronomy programs; however, its predictive power and utility as a means of selecting "successful" applicants has never been examined. We…

We analyze the role of first (leading) author gender on the number of citations that a paper receives, on the publishing frequency and on the self-citing tendency. We consider a complete sample of over 200,000 publications from 1950 to 2015…

Online bibliographic databases have enabled new research through which bibliographic records are analyzed as data about science. Within these records, the acknowledgements sections of papers are often used to draw conclusions about funding…

By utilising the inbuilt citation counts from NASA's astrophysics data system (ADS) I derive how many citations refereed articles receive as a function of time since publication. After five years, one paper in a hundred has accumulated 91…

Obtaining funding is an important part of becoming a successful scientist. Junior faculty spend a great deal of time finding the right agencies and programs that best match their research profile. But what are the factors that influence the…

Citation measures, and newer altmetric measures such as downloads are now commonly used to inform personnel decisions. How well do or can these measures measure or predict the past, current of future scholarly performance of an individual?…

Citations are essential for recognizing scientific contributions, yet citation behavior is shaped by more than just relevance or quality. We analyzed approximately 255,000 refereed astronomy articles published between 2000 and 2025 to…

We have examined the success rates of 19 American, Canadian, Australian, and Dutch graduate programs in producing astronomers. A 20-year baseline was considered (1975-1994), incorporating 897 PhD recipients. The major conclusion from our…

In this short communication I highlight how the number of collaborators on papers in the main astronomy journals has evolved over time. We see a trend of moving away from single-author papers. This communication is based on data in the…

The scientific impact of the research of 36 astronomy PhD granting departments is measured and ranked here. Because of the complex nature of Universities, this study looks at the Universities in two ways; first analyzing the impact of the…

The NSF's Astronomy and Astrophysics Postdoctoral Fellowship (AAPF) is exceptional among the available postdoctoral awards in Astronomy and Astrophysics. The fellowship is one of the few that allows postdoctoral researchers to pursue an…

In this paper we present a number of metrics for usage of the SAO/NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS). Since the ADS is used by the entire astronomical community, these are indicative of how the astronomical literature is used. We will show…

I analyze the postdoctoral career tracks of a nearly-complete sample of astronomers from 28 United States graduate astronomy and astrophysics programs spanning 13 graduating years (N=1063). A majority of both men and women (65% and 66%,…

This paper calibrates how metrics derivable from the SAO/NASA Astrophysics Data System can be used to estimate the future impact of astronomy research careers and thereby to inform decisions on resource allocation such as job hires and…

Over the last decade proposal success rates in the fundamental sciences have dropped significantly. Astronomy and related fields funded by NASA and NSF are no exception. Data across agencies show that this is not principally the result of a…

We have used data from ADS, AAS, and astro-ph, to study the publishing, preprint posting, and citation patterns for papers published in the ApJ in 1999 and 2002. This allowed us to track statistical trends in author demographics, preprint…

Understanding the qualitative patterns of research endeavor of scientific authors in terms of publication count and their impact (citation) is important in order to quantify success trajectories. Here, we examine the career profile of…

The professional literature provides one means to review the evolution and geographic distribution of the scientific communities engaged in solar and heliospheric physics. With help of the Astrophysics Data System (NASA/ADS), I trace the…

We examine the publication rates of 400 research-focused members in the ASTRO3D Centre of Excellence by gender, project, and year from January 2018 to January 2024 (six years). Of the 443 refereed publications led by ASTRO3D members, women…