Reputation and Impact in Academic Careers

Reputation is an important social construct in science, which enables informed quality assessments of both publications and careers of scientists in the absence of complete systemic information. However, the relation between reputation and career growth of an individual remains poorly understood, despite recent proliferation of quantitative research evaluation methods. Here we develop an original framework for measuring how a publication's citation rate $\Delta c$ depends on the reputation of its central author $i$, in addition to its net citation count $c$. To estimate the strength of the reputation effect, we perform a longitudinal analysis on the careers of 450 highly-cited scientists, using the total citations $C_{i}$ of each scientist as his/her reputation measure. We find a citation crossover $c_{\times}$ which distinguishes the strength of the reputation effect. For publications with $c < c_{\times}$, the author's reputation is found to dominate the annual citation rate. Hence, a new publication may gain a significant early advantage corresponding to roughly a 66% increase in the citation rate for each tenfold increase in $C_{i}$. However, the reputation effect becomes negligible for highly cited publications meaning that for $c\geq c_{\times}$ the citation rate measures scientific impact more transparently. In addition we have developed a stochastic reputation model, which is found to reproduce numerous statistical observations for real careers, thus providing insight into the microscopic mechanisms underlying cumulative advantage in science.Comment: Final published version of the main manuscript including additional analysis: 9 pages, 4 figures, 1 table, and full reference list, including those in the Supplementary Information. For the SI Appendix, see http://physics.bu.edu/~amp17/webpage_files/MyPapers/Reputation_SI.pd

Organizational Agility through Project Portfolio Management

In dynamic environments, organizational agility is essential for survival; organizations must be able to adapt to change in order to succeed. In project-based organizations, a dynamic project portfolio management (PPM) capability can enhance organizational agility. PPM is an important organizational capability that enables organizations to manage and balance the portfolio holistically, to align projects with strategy, and to ensure adequate resourcing for projects in order to maximize the benefits from project investments. A dynamic PPM capability enables organizations to be agile and flexible by facilitating adjustments to the project portfolio and reallocating resources in response to the changes in the environment. In order for the PPM capability to remain relevant, it must evolve to reflect changes in the environment. Examples of aspects of PPM that enhance organizational agility are outlined in this paper to provide guidance for practitioners

A cross sectional survey of urban Canadian family physicians' provision of minor office procedures

BACKGROUND: A discordance exists between the proportion of Canadian family physicians that we expect should be able to perform minor office procedures and the actual provision of care. This pattern has not been extensively studied. The objective of this study was to determine the current patterns and obstacles relating to the provision of four minor office procedures by GP/FPs in a small city in Ontario, Canada. An additional goal was to determine the impact of the remuneration method on the provision of such services. METHODS: A survey was mailed to all GP/FPs practising in Kingston, Ontario. The main outcomes measured in the study were work setting and remuneration method, current procedural practices with respect to four procedures, reasons for not performing procedures, current skill levels, and desire to upgrade. RESULTS: Surveys were mailed to all 108 GP/FPs in the City of Kingston. Completed surveys were collected for 82 percent (89/108) and 10 were excluded leaving 79 eligible participants. The percentages of GP/FPs who reported performing the procedure were as follows: dermatological excision (63.3%), endometrial biopsy (35.4%), shoulder injection (31.6%), and knee injection (43.0%). The majority of GP/FPs who would not do the procedure themselves would refer to a specialist colleague rather than to another GP/FP. The top reason cited for not performing a specific procedure was "lack of up to date skills" followed by "lack of time". The latter was the only statistically significant difference reported between GP/FPs working in Family Health Networks and GP/FPs working in fee for service settings (26.7% vs 47.0%, χ(2 )= 4.191 p = 0.041). CONCLUSION: A large number of Kingston, Ontario GP/FPs refer patients who require one of four minor office-based procedures for specialist consultation. Referral to other GP/FP colleagues appears underutilized. A perceived lack of up to date skills and a lack of time appear to be concerns. GP/FPs working in Family Health Networks were more likely to perform these procedures themselves. Further studies would clarify the role of changes in medical education, the role of continuing education, and the impact of different remuneration models

On Economic Complexity and the Fitness of Nations

Complex economic systems can often be described by a network, with nodes representing economic entities and edges their interdependencies, while network centrality is often a good indicator of importance. Recent publications have implemented a nonlinear iterative Fitness-Complexity (FC) algorithm to measure centrality in a bipartite trade network, which aims to represent the 'Fitness' of national economies as well as the 'Complexity' of the products being traded. In this paper, we discuss this methodological approach and conclude that further work is needed to identify stable and reliable measures of fitness and complexity. We provide theoretical and numerical evidence for the intrinsic instability in the nonlinear definition of the FC algorithm. We perform an in-depth evaluation of the algorithm's rankings in two real world networks at the country level: the global trade network, and the patent network in different technological domains. In both networks, we find evidence of the instabilities predicted theoretically, and show that 'complex' products or patents tend often to be those that countries rarely produce, rather than those that are intrinsically more difficult to produce