LIFE: bibliography

The following bibliography came out of the research which formed the first phase of the joint British Library-UCL LIFE (Lifecycle Information for E-Literature) project. The references are not an exhaustive review of digital preservation activities, they are a reflection of the aims of the LIFE project. Any suggestions for additions or comments can be emailed to [email protected]

Age, academic career and scientific performance of Czech economists

There have been many papers (both theoretical and empirical) in last hundred years, which tried to explain the relationship between age and scientific output in the academia. Although most of those papers conclude that the productivity of scientists’ declines after reaching certain age and then continuously declines, there is still no agreement about factors, which stand behind the reverse U-shaped age-productivity curve. The aim of this paper is to summarize the theoretical arguments, which may explain the declining productivity of scientists in later phases of their life cycle. Moreover, it provides preliminary analysis of relationship between age and scientific output of Czech economists. Because the recent studies do not take age as relevant factor influencing the scientific performance, an alternative approach examining productivity dependency upon the phase of academic career is also provided

Within- and between-department variability in individual productivity. The case of Economics

There are two types of research units whose performance is usually investigated in one or several scientific fields: individuals (or publications), or larger units such as universities or entire countries. In contrast, the information about the university departments (or research institutes) is not easy to come by. This is important because, in the social sciences, university departments are the governance units where the demand for and the supply of researchers determine an equilibrium allocation of scholars to institutions. This paper uses a unique dataset consisting of all individuals working in 2007 in the top 81 Economics departments in the world according to the Econphd university ranking

Identifying Age, Cohort and Period Effects in Scientific Research Productivity: Discussion and Illustration Using Simulated and Actual Data on French Physicists

The identification of age, cohort (vintage), and period (year) effects in a panel of individuals or other units is an old problem in the social sciences, but one that has not been much studied in the context of measuring researcher productivity. In the context of a semi-parametric model of productivity where these effects are assumed to enter in an additive manner, we present the conditions necessary to identify and test for the presence of the three effects. In particular we show that failure to specify precisely the conditions under which such a model is identified can lead to misleading conclusions about the productivity-age relationship. We illustrate our methods using data on the publications 1986-1997 by 465 French condensed matter physicists who were born between 1936 and 1960.

Crossing the hurdle: the determinants of individual scientific performance

An original cross sectional dataset referring to a medium sized Italian university is implemented in order to analyze the determinants of scientific research production at individual level. The dataset includes 942 permanent researchers of various scientific sectors for a three year time span (2008 - 2010). Three different indicators - based on the number of publications or citations - are considered as response variables. The corresponding distributions are highly skewed and display an excess of zero - valued observations. In this setting, the goodness of fit of several Poisson mixture regression models are explored by assuming an extensive set of explanatory variables. As to the personal observable characteristics of the researchers, the results emphasize the age effect and the gender productivity gap, as previously documented by existing studies. Analogously, the analysis confirm that productivity is strongly affected by the publication and citation practices adopted in different scientific disciplines. The empirical evidence on the connection between teaching and research activities suggests that no univocal substitution or complementarity thesis can be claimed: a major teaching load does not affect the odds to be a non-active researcher and does not significantly reduce the number of publications for active researchers. In addition, new evidence emerges on the effect of researchers administrative tasks, which seem to be negatively related with researcher's productivity, and on the composition of departments. Researchers' productivity is apparently enhanced by operating in department filled with more administrative and technical staff, and it is not significantly affected by the composition of the department in terms of senior or junior researchers.Comment: Revised version accepted for publication by Scientometric

Young Researchers in the Labour Market in Russian Regions

Currently, significant efforts are being made to attract and retain young people in science. However, based on the statistics of academic staff, these efforts have not yet yielded the desired results. The article aims to examine the demand for academic staff and their supply. It is hypothesised that the exclusive focus of state policy on attracting young scientists is not a sufficient condition for capacity building of academic staff in Russia. The paper presents an approach to the study of demand factors for academic staff, including young researchers, and their supply. Correlation analysis shows that, according to the current dynamics of indicators, the economic and social demand for academic staff, especially young researchers, is not articulated. At the same time, the analysis revealed a close relationship between the number of young researchers and indicators of supply of academic staff, and even practically functional relationships between individual indicators. This connection is explained by demographic reasons, the lack of an effective system for ensuring the inflow of young researchers and the growing prestige of science as a career. The obtained results demonstrate that researchers aged 20-29 years significantly differ from those aged 30-39 years in terms of demand factors for academic staff and their supply. In order to comprehensively solve the problem of capacity building of academic staff in Russia, it is important to support not only young researchers, but also scientific schools. © 2023 Institute of Economics, Ural Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences. All rights reserved.Ministry of Education and Science of the Russian Federation, MinobrnaukaKeywords: young researchers, scientists, academic staff, demand, supply, science, industrially developed regions Acknowledgments: The article has been prepared with the support of the Ministry of Science and Higher Education of the Russian Federation (Ural Federal University Program of Development within the Priority-2030 Program). For citation:Vasilyeva,E.V.(2023).Young Researchers in the Labour Market in Russian Regions.Ekonomika regiona / Economy of regions, 19(4), 1062-1076. https://doi.org/10.17059/ekon.reg.2023-4-