What Should I Be Doing, and Where Are They Doing It? Scholarly Productivity of Academic Psychologists

Abstract

Scholarly productivity is used to index faculty achievement, but normative data on publication rates among academic psychologists are scarce. This article presents the results of a study of 1,216 faculty members from 96 schools, ranging from elite research universities to minor undergraduate colleges. As expected, faculty members at research universities publish the most, followed by those at elite 4-year schools and other doctoral institutions. Institutional prestige has little effect on productivity, except that elite universities employ a greater proportion of truly eminent scholars than other schools do. The fact that many of these scholars are hired by elite schools after achieving eminence elsewhere suggests that financial prowess, rather than institutional climate, produces the latter effect. Academics at all of these types of schools tend to continue publishing throughout their careers; achieving tenure has little effect on their subsequent scholarship. Faculty members at master's universities and lesser 4-year schools publish less than others and tend to cease publication activity after about 10 years, presumably upon receiving tenure. Males tend to publish more than females during the initial push for tenure, but not thereafter; females, unlike males, tend to increase their publication rates as they mature professionally. A subset of highly productive males who are moving toward more prestigious types of schools accounts for much of the remaininggender difference. The number of predoctoral publications is a relatively weak predictor of postdoctoral scholarship.