in press at Scientometrics
Productivity does not equal usefulness
Lutz Bornmann* & Alexander Tekles*+
*Administrative Headquarters of the Max Planck Society Division for Science and Innovation Studies Hofgartenstr. 8, 80539 Munich, Germany. Email:
[email protected];
[email protected]
+Ludwig-Maximilians-University Munich Institute of Sociology Konradstr. 6 80801 Munich, Germany.
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Abstract For a recent commentary in Nature, Ioannidis, Klavans, and Boyack (2018) searched the Scopus database and identified those “hyperprolific” authors who have published more than one paper every five days. The 265 authors who belong to this very productive class contribute disproportionately to the archive. We show the relationship between paper productivity (annual number of papers) and usefulness of research (annual number of papers which belong to the 1% most frequently cited in the corresponding subject categories and publication years) for 160,108 researchers. Based on our results, we suggest that the identification of “hyperprolific” authors should consider not only quantity, but also the usefulness of research activities (measured in terms of citations).
Keywords hyperprolific authors; bibliometrics
Creative minds are the backbone of science. Nature Index recently published a supplement presenting eleven up-and-coming researchers in the natural sciences;1 Clarivate Analytics recognized 17 researchers as Citation Laureates (whose influence is comparable to that of Nobel Prize recipients).2 For a recent commentary in Nature, Ioannidis et al. (2018) searched the Scopus database and identified those “hyperprolific” authors who have published more than one paper every five days. The 265 authors who belong to this very productive class contribute disproportionately to the archive. Although these authors are mass producers of new knowledge claims, they should be dissociated from creative minds. Research is only useful if it is not merely part of the archive, but also a broad shoulder of later research (i.e., if it is cited). Although research in scientometrics suggests that productivity and citation impact are positively related (Larivière & Costas, 2016), the relationship seems to be flattening in the case of very high productivity.
Figure 1. Scatterplot of productivity and usefulness for 160,108 researchers
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See https://www.natureindex.com/supplements/nature-index-2018-rising-stars/index See https://clarivate.com/2018-citation-laureates/
Figure 1 shows the relationship between paper productivity (annual number of papers) and usefulness of research (annual number of papers which belong to the 1% most frequently cited in the corresponding subject categories and publication years) for 160,108 researchers. We considered articles and reviews published before 2015. The bibliometric data are from an in-house database developed and maintained by the Max Planck Digital Library (MPDL, Munich) and based on the Web of Science (Clarivate Analytics). Figure 1 includes researchers with a manually managed and recently updated profile at ResearcherID (see http://www.researcherid.com). We excluded possible organizations which sometimes have a profile in ResearcherID (ResearcherIDs with an associated last name that could not be matched to a last name of a publication’s author). Following Ioannidis et al. (2018), we further excluded authors mainly publishing in physics (i.e., authors with at least 80% papers in this area). The results in Figure 1 reveal that “hyperprolific” authorship is not a guarantee for usefulness. We coloured in blue all authors with an annual number of at least 40 publications (Ioannidis et al., 2018, searched for authors with more than 72 papers per year). These seven authors spread over the top 1% papers range with (relatively low) annual numbers of the top 1% papers between 0.04 and 2.7. We propose to particularly locate creative minds in the group of 31 authors (coloured red in Figure 1) with significantly lower annual numbers of publications who outperform these “hyperprolific” authors with regard to usefulness in terms of the top 1% papers (between 2.7 and 8.7 papers). The creative mind with the highest annual number of the top 1% papers particularly stands out, with 34.5 papers published annually on average and an annual average number of highly cited papers of 8.7. Based on our results, we suggest that the identification of “hyperprolific” authors should consider not only quantity, but also the usefulness of research activities (measured in terms of citations). Progress in research depends on papers that are able to build sustainable shoulders for future research.
References Ioannidis, J. P. A., Klavans, R., & Boyack, K. W. (2018). Thousands of scientists publish a paper every five days. Nature, 561(7722), 167-169. Larivière, V., & Costas, R. (2016). How Many Is Too Many? On the Relationship between Research Productivity and Impact. PLoS ONE, 11(9), e0162709. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0162709.
