Publish or Perish: Selective Attrition as a Unifying Explanation for Patterns in Innovation over the Career

Studying 5.6 million biomedical science articles published over three decades, we reconcile conflicts in a longstanding interdisciplinary literature on scientists' life-cycle productivity by controlling for selective attrition and distinguishing between research quantity and quality. While rese...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:The Journal of human resources 2023-07, Vol.58 (4), p.1307-1346
Main Authors: Yu, Huifeng, Marschke, Gerald, Ross, Matthew B, Staudt, Joseph, Weinberg, Bruce A
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Accumulation
Attrition
Biomedical research
Capital formation
Careers
Human capital
Innovations
Interdisciplinary aspects
Productivity
Publishing
Scientists
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Summary:Studying 5.6 million biomedical science articles published over three decades, we reconcile conflicts in a longstanding interdisciplinary literature on scientists' life-cycle productivity by controlling for selective attrition and distinguishing between research quantity and quality. While research quality declines monotonically over the career, this decline is easily overlooked because higher "ability" authors have longer publishing careers. Our results have implications for broader questions of human capital accumulation over the career and federal research policies that shift funding to early-career researchers - while funding researchers at their most creative, these policies must be undertaken carefully because young researchers are less "able" on average.
ISSN:0022-166X
1548-8004
DOI:10.3368/jhr.59.2.1219-10630R1