Related papers: Tenure and Research Trajectories
Faculty mobility is often understood as a mechanism through which universities redistribute scientific talent and potentially improve research performance. Yet the system-level structure of mobility and its association with individual…
A scientist may publish tens or hundreds of papers over a career, but these contributions are not evenly spaced in time. Sixty years of studies on career productivity patterns in a variety of fields suggest an intuitive and universal…
We introduce a new survey of professors at roughly 150 of the most research-intensive institutions of higher education in the US. We document seven new features of how research-active professors are compensated, how they spend their time,…
Tenure provides a permanent position to faculty in higher education institutions. In North America, it is granted to those who have established a record of excellence in research, teaching and services in a limited period. However, in…
Interdisciplinary research has gained prominence as a necessity for addressing complex challenges, yet its impact on early academic careers remains unclear. This study examines how interdisciplinarity during doctoral training influences…
Understanding how institutional changes within academia may affect the overall potential of science requires a better quantitative representation of how careers evolve over time. Since knowledge spillovers, cumulative advantage,…
Generative artificial intelligence (AI) has begun to reshape academic publishing by enabling the rapid production of submission-ready manuscripts. While such tools promise to enhance productivity, they also raise concerns about overwhelming…
A pilot survey was sent to chairs of 14 doctoral math departments asking for three types of data: (1) category on job-placements for research post-docs leaving their department in three recent years; (2) category of jobs from which their…
Women are dramatically underrepresented in computer science at all levels in academia and account for just 15% of tenure-track faculty. Understanding the causes of this gender imbalance would inform both policies intended to rectify it and…
We use the data of tenured and tenure-track faculty at ten public and private math departments of various tiered rankings in the United States, as a case study to demonstrate the statistical and mathematical relationships among several…
Scientists are frequently faced with the important decision to start or terminate a creative partnership. This process can be influenced by strategic motivations, as early career researchers are pursuers, whereas senior researchers are…
Faculty at prestigious institutions dominate scientific discourse, with the small proportion of researchers at elite universities producing a disproportionate share of all research publications. Environmental prestige is known to drive such…
Many studies demonstrate that there is still a significant gender bias, especially at higher career levels, in many areas including science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM). We investigated field-dependent, gender-specific…
The expectation that scientific productivity follows regular patterns over a career underpins many scholarly evaluations. However, recent studies of individual productivity patterns reveal a puzzle: the average number of papers published…
Despite increasing representation in graduate training programs, a disproportionate number of women leave academic research before obtaining an independent position. To understand factors underlying this trend, we analyzed a…
Faculty hiring shapes the flow of ideas, resources, and opportunities in academia, influencing not only individual career trajectories but also broader patterns of institutional prestige and scientific progress. While traditional studies…
We analyze the publication records of individual scientists, aiming to quantify the topic switching dynamics of scientists and its influence. For each scientist, the relations among her publications are characterized via shared references.…
The field of the mathematical sciences relies on a continuous academic pipeline in which individuals progress from undergraduate study through graduate training and postdoctoral program to long term faculty employment. National statistics…
A common expectation is that career productivity peaks rather early and then gradually declines with seniority. But whether this holds true is still an open question. Here we investigate the productivity trajectories of almost 8,500…
The demographics of the field of Astronomy, and the gender balance in particular, is an important active area of investigation. A piece of information missing from the discussion is the gender breakdown of the applicant pool for faculty…