Understanding relationship between topic selection and academic performance of scientific teams based on entity popularity trend

Abstract

PurposeProper topic selection is an essential prerequisite for the success of research. To study this, this article proposes an important concerned factor of topic selection-topic popularity, to examine the relationship between topic selection and team performance.Design/methodology/approachThe authors adopt extracted entities on the type of gene/protein, which are used as proxies as topics, to keep track of the development of topic popularity. The decision tree model is used to classify the ascending phase and descending phase of entity popularity based on the temporal trend of entity occurrence frequency. Through comparing various dimensions of team performance – academic performance, research funding, relationship between performance and funding and corresponding author's influence at different phases of topic popularity – the relationship between the selected phase of topic popularity and academic performance of research teams can be explored.FindingsFirst, topic popularity can impact team performance in the academic productivity and their research work's academic influence. Second, topic popularity can affect the quantity and amount of research funding received by teams. Third, topic popularity can impact the promotion effect of funding on team performance. Fourth, topic popularity can impact the influence of the corresponding author on team performance.Originality/valueThis is a new attempt to conduct team-oriented analysis on the relationship between topic selection and academic performance. Through understanding relationships amongst topic popularity, team performance and research funding, the study would be valuable for researchers and policy makers to conduct reasonable decision making on topic selection.