Less than 1% of scientists have published 41.7% of all papers between 1996 and 2011

[OnlinePoker]

Abstract

Background

The ability of a scientist to maintain a continuous stream of publication may be important, because research requires continuity of effort. However, there is no data on what proportion of scientists manages to publish each and every year over long periods of time.

Methodology/Principal Findings

Using the entire Scopus database, we estimated that there are 15,153,100 publishing scientists (distinct author identifiers) in the period 1996–2011. However, only 150,608 (<1%) of them have published something in each and every year in this 16-year period (uninterrupted, continuous presence [UCP] in the literature). This small core of scientists with UCP are far more cited than others, and they account for 41.7% of all papers in the same period and 87.1% of all papers with >1000 citations in the same period. Skipping even a single year substantially affected the average citation impact. We also studied the birth and death dynamics of membership in this influential UCP core, by imputing and estimating UCP-births and UCP-deaths. We estimated that 16,877 scientists would qualify for UCP-birth in 1997 (no publication in 1996, UCP in 1997–2012) and 9,673 scientists had their UCP-death in 2010. The relative representation of authors with UCP was enriched in Medical Research, in the academic sector and in Europe/North America, while the relative representation of authors without UCP was enriched in the Social Sciences and Humanities, in industry, and in other continents.

Conclusions

The proportion of the scientific workforce that maintains a continuous uninterrupted stream of publications each and every year over many years is very limited, but it accounts for the lion’s share of researchers with high citation impact. This finding may have implications for the structure, stability and vulnerability of the scientific workforce.

http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0101698

[Erich Bloodaxe BSN]

1. Makes sense to me.

Academics are under the most pressure to publish, and those working as advisors to grad students are going to be publishing pretty much every year they have students at a minimum. My own advisor published at least a dozen times or so during the 4 or so years I worked with him. After I finished my dissertation, I never published again, although admittedly I switched out of the field after graduation.

[Fred Sanders]

2. One guy may write one final thesis that is published, and then has to work for a living, and not

work as an academic, so the implication of the article that scientists, defined as having published ONE scientific piece, are lazy or not doing their jobs, or whatever the implication might be, it is not clear, is mute.

"This finding may have implications for the structure, stability and vulnerability of the scientific workforce."

[mike_c]

3. many of us are at institutions that have minimal publication demands...

...or that judge scholarship by different criteria. My own publication record is really just a half dozen or so peer reviewed papers in 25 years, although I'm ashamed to admit that I haven't put as much pressure on my grad students as I should have to publish their thesis work. I've always told myself that after a decent interval, I can submit papers for them, but I've only done it a couple of times. And those other institutional demands take up a LOT of time, leaving little for polishing other peoples' apples.

[DetlefK]

4. Not very surprising, considering HOW papers are written.

Imagine a research-group with a professor and lots of exchangeable underlings. They do the work, he writes the paper. He gets listed as author, they get listed as co-authors.

But I don't think, this happens on a regular basis: A professor is too busy with meetings and getting grants to write a paper or do research. He knows the theory, but the ones doing the actual experiments are far better suited to write down what has happened.