Resilience and Volatility in Academic Publishing: The Case of the University of Maribor (2004–2023)

This article examines the resilience and volatility of academic publishing at the University of Maribor (UM) from 2004 to 2023, a period marked by significant economic and policy shifts in Slovenia. Using employment data from UM’s internal records and publication data from OpenAlex, we analyze the relationship between employed researchers and publishing authors. Despite a significant drop in researcher employment during the economic recession (2009–2013), the number of unique authors publishing under the UM affiliation surprisingly increased. Analysis of author turnover reveals a striking pattern: high short-term volatility (annual churn ~40–50%) contrasted with significant mid-term stability (5-year churn ~8–10%). Survival analysis confirms this pattern, revealing high initial attrition among publishing authors followed by long-term persistence for a core group of researchers. Network analysis of co-authorship patterns shows increasing resilience to the targeted removal of influential authors over time. Most significantly, we identify a fundamental shift in network structure around 2016, when the co-authorship network transitioned from dissassortative to assortative mixing patterns, coinciding with recovery in employment growth. This shift suggests a profound change in collaboration dynamics, from a system where highly connected researchers primarily collaborated with less-connected ones to one where highly connected researchers increasingly collaborate with each other. We discuss the implications for research policy and university management, emphasizing the need to balance short-term performance metrics with long-term stability and resilience.