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Testing the trade‐off between productivity and quality in research activities

Author

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  • Giovanni Abramo
  • Ciriaco Andrea D'Angelo
  • Flavia Di Costa

Abstract

In recent years there has been an increasingly pressing need for the evaluation of results from public‐sector research activity, particularly to permit the efficient allocation of ever scarcer resources. Many of the studies and evaluation exercises that have been conducted at the national and international levels emphasize the quality dimension of research output, while neglecting that of productivity. This work is intended to test for the possible existence of correlation between quantity and quality of scientific production and determine whether the most productive researchers are also those that achieve results that are qualitatively better than those of their colleagues. The analysis proposed refers to the entire Italian university system and is based on the observation of production in the hard sciences by more than 26,000 researchers in the period 2001–2005. The results show that the output of more‐productive researchers is superior in quality than that of less‐productive researchers. The relation between productivity and quality results is largely insensitive to the types of indicators or the test methods applied and also seems to differ little among the various disciplines examined.

Suggested Citation

  • Giovanni Abramo & Ciriaco Andrea D'Angelo & Flavia Di Costa, 2010. "Testing the trade‐off between productivity and quality in research activities," Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 61(1), pages 132-140, January.
    • Handle: RePEc:bla:jamist:v:61:y:2010:i:1:p:132-140
    DOI: 10.1002/asi.21254
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    Citations

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    Cited by:

    1. Christopher Zou & Jordan B. Peterson, 2016. "Quantifying the scientific output of new researchers using the zp-index," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 106(3), pages 901-916, March.
    2. Abramo, Giovanni & D’Angelo, Ciriaco Andrea, 2016. "A comparison of university performance scores and ranks by MNCS and FSS," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 10(4), pages 889-901.
    3. Jonas Lindahl & Rickard Danell, 2016. "The information value of early career productivity in mathematics: a ROC analysis of prediction errors in bibliometricly informed decision making," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 109(3), pages 2241-2262, December.
    4. Giovanni Abramo & Ciriaco Andrea D’Angelo & Anastasiia Soldatenkova, 2016. "The dispersion of the citation distribution of top scientists’ publications," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 109(3), pages 1711-1724, December.
    5. Lutz Bornmann & Werner Marx, 2014. "How to evaluate individual researchers working in the natural and life sciences meaningfully? A proposal of methods based on percentiles of citations," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 98(1), pages 487-509, January.
    6. Osmo Kivinen & Juha Hedman & Päivi Kaipainen, 2013. "Productivity analysis of research in Natural Sciences, Technology and Clinical Medicine: an input–output model applied in comparison of Top 300 ranked universities of 4 North European and 4 East Asian," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 94(2), pages 683-699, February.
    7. Bornmann, Lutz & Williams, Richard, 2017. "Can the journal impact factor be used as a criterion for the selection of junior researchers? A large-scale empirical study based on ResearcherID data," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 11(3), pages 788-799.
    8. Matthew J Michalska-Smith & Stefano Allesina, 2017. "And, not or: Quality, quantity in scientific publishing," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 12(6), pages 1-12, June.
    9. Giovanni Abramo & Ciriaco Andrea D’Angelo & Fulvio Viel, 2011. "The field-standardized average impact of national research systems compared to world average: the case of Italy," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 88(2), pages 599-615, August.
    10. Huang, Ding-wei, 2016. "Positive correlation between quality and quantity in academic journals," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 10(2), pages 329-335.

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