IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/spr/scient/v127y2022i7d10.1007_s11192-022-04324-7.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Are the strategic research agendas of researchers in the social sciences determinants of research productivity?

Author

Listed:
  • João M. Santos

    (Iscte – Instituto Universitário de Lisboa, Centro de Investigação e Estudos de Sociologia (CIES-Iscte))

  • Hugo Horta

    (The University of Hong Kong)

  • Huan Li

    (The University of Hong Kong)

Abstract

This study analyzes the association between the strategic research agendas of researchers in the social sciences and their research performance. Based on a worldwide sample of 604 researchers, this study assesses whether researchers’ strategic research agendas are predictors of both short-term (last 3 years) and long-term career publications and citations, after controlling for relevant literature-informed determinants of research productivity. The results show that, in a short-term perspective, research agendas have a limited association with productivity and visibility. Solely the research agendas strategically oriented towards publishing and those collaborative in nature have positive associations with research productivity and visibility. This changes when a long-term perspective is considered. Over the course of a career, research agendas are significantly associated with number of publications and citations. Research agendas oriented towards publishing and collaboration, and those focused on a single field of knowledge, prestige gain and discovery have a positive effect on career research performance, while those research agendas that are overspecialized, dispersed over several fields of knowledge and topics, and influenced by a mentor have opposite associations. This study also finds that prolific research productivity shapes one’s strategic research agenda: the more one publishes, the more one is bound to have a strategic research agenda that is focused on prestige, discovery, a further drive to publish, engagement in a multitude of topics to research, and pursuing multidisciplinary and collaborative research. This effect is driven by an accumulation of publications, not citations. These findings highlight how strategic research choices interact with the individual performance of researchers in the social sciences in performativity-oriented research landscapes.

Suggested Citation

  • João M. Santos & Hugo Horta & Huan Li, 2022. "Are the strategic research agendas of researchers in the social sciences determinants of research productivity?," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 127(7), pages 3719-3747, July.
    • Handle: RePEc:spr:scient:v:127:y:2022:i:7:d:10.1007_s11192-022-04324-7
    DOI: 10.1007/s11192-022-04324-7
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s11192-022-04324-7
    File Function: Abstract
    Download Restriction: Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1007/s11192-022-04324-7?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Vincent Larivière & Éric Archambault & Yves Gingras & Étienne Vignola‐Gagné, 2006. "The place of serials in referencing practices: Comparing natural sciences and engineering with social sciences and humanities," Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 57(8), pages 997-1004, June.
    2. Tung Manh Ho & Ha Viet Nguyen & Thu Trang Vuong & Hiep-Hung Pham & Nancy K. Napier & Quan-Hoang Vuong, 2017. "Effects of work environments and collaborations on productivity in Vietnamese social sciences: evidence from 2008-2017 Scopus data," Working Papers CEB 17-018, ULB -- Universite Libre de Bruxelles.
    3. Ioana Alexandra Horodnic & Adriana Zaiţ, 2015. "Motivation and research productivity in a university system undergoing transition," Research Evaluation, Oxford University Press, vol. 24(3), pages 282-292.
    4. Wen Lou & Yuehua Zhao & Yuchen Chen & Jin Zhang, 2018. "Research or management? An investigation of the impact of leadership roles on the research performance of academic administrators," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 117(1), pages 191-209, October.
    5. Yaşar Tonta & Müge Akbulut, 2020. "Does monetary support increase citation impact of scholarly papers?," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 125(2), pages 1617-1641, November.
    6. Diniz-Filho, José Alexandre F. & Fioravanti, Maria Clorinda S. & Bini, Luis Mauricio & Rangel, Thiago Fernando, 2016. "Drivers of academic performance in a Brazilian university under a government-restructuring program," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 10(1), pages 151-161.
    7. Anton J. Nederhof, 2006. "Bibliometric monitoring of research performance in the Social Sciences and the Humanities: A Review," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 66(1), pages 81-100, January.
    8. Jonathan M. Levitt & Mike Thelwall, 2016. "Long term productivity and collaboration in information science," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 108(3), pages 1103-1117, September.
    9. Frandsen, Tove Faber & Jacobsen, Rasmus Højbjerg & Wallin, Johan A. & Brixen, Kim & Ousager, Jakob, 2015. "Gender differences in scientific performance: A bibliometric matching analysis of Danish health sciences Graduates," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 9(4), pages 1007-1017.
    10. Sabrina J. Mayer & Justus M. K. Rathmann, 2018. "How does research productivity relate to gender? Analyzing gender differences for multiple publication dimensions," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 117(3), pages 1663-1693, December.
    11. Tove Faber Frandsen & Rasmus Højbjerg Jacobsen & Jakob Ousager, 2020. "Gender gaps in scientific performance: a longitudinal matching study of health sciences researchers," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 124(2), pages 1511-1527, August.
    12. Symes, David & Hoefnagel, Ellen, 2010. "Fisheries policy, research and the social sciences in Europe: Challenges for the 21st century," Marine Policy, Elsevier, vol. 34(2), pages 268-275, March.
    13. Russell Smyth & Vinod Mishra, 2014. "Academic inbreeding and research productivity and impact in Australian law schools," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 98(1), pages 583-618, January.
    14. Rørstad, Kristoffer & Aksnes, Dag W., 2015. "Publication rate expressed by age, gender and academic position – A large-scale analysis of Norwegian academic staff," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 9(2), pages 317-333.
    15. Fredrik Niclas Piro & Dag W. Aksnes & Kristoffer Rørstad, 2013. "A macro analysis of productivity differences across fields: Challenges in the measurement of scientific publishing," Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 64(2), pages 307-320, February.
    16. Agrawal, Ajay & McHale, John & Oettl, Alexander, 2017. "How stars matter: Recruiting and peer effects in evolutionary biology," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 46(4), pages 853-867.
    17. Jorge Rodriguez Miramontes & C. N. Gonzalez-Brambila, 2016. "The effects of external collaboration on research output in engineering," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 109(2), pages 661-675, November.
    18. Jordan, John M. & Meador, Mark & Walters, Stephen J. K., 1989. "Academic research productivity, department size and organization: Further results," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 8(4), pages 345-352, August.
    19. Hugo Horta & João M. Santos, 2016. "An instrument to measure individuals’ research agenda setting: the multi-dimensional research agendas inventory," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 108(3), pages 1243-1265, September.
    20. Gonzalez-Brambila, Claudia & Veloso, Francisco M., 2007. "The determinants of research output and impact: A study of Mexican researchers," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 36(7), pages 1035-1051, September.
    21. Thomas Bolli & Jörg Schläpfer, 2015. "Job mobility, peer effects, and research productivity in economics," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 104(3), pages 629-650, September.
    22. Giovanni Abramo & Ciriaco Andrea D’Angelo & Anastasiia Soldatenkova, 2017. "How long do top scientists maintain their stardom? An analysis by region, gender and discipline: evidence from Italy," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 110(2), pages 867-877, February.
    23. Giovanni Abramo & Ciriaco Andrea D’Angelo & Anastasiia Soldatenkova, 2017. "Erratum to: How long do top scientists maintain their stardom? An analysis by region, gender and discipline: evidence from Italy," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 113(3), pages 1825-1825, December.
    24. A. Baccini & L. Barabesi & M. Cioni & C. Pisani, 2014. "Crossing the hurdle: the determinants of individual scientific performance," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 101(3), pages 2035-2062, December.
    25. Shamsul Arifeen Khan Mamun & Mohammad Mafizur Rahman, 2015. "Is there any feedback effect between academic research publication and research collaboration? Evidence from an Australian university," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 105(3), pages 2179-2196, December.
    26. Fredrik Niclas Piro & Dag W. Aksnes & Kristoffer Rørstad, 2013. "A macro analysis of productivity differences across fields: Challenges in the measurement of scientific publishing," Journal of the Association for Information Science & Technology, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 64(2), pages 307-320, February.
    27. Frederik T. Verleysen & Truyken L. B. Ossenblok, 2017. "Profiles of monograph authors in the social sciences and humanities: an analysis of productivity, career stage, co-authorship, disciplinary affiliation and gender, based on a regional bibliographic da," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 111(3), pages 1673-1686, June.
    28. Junwan Liu & Yinglu Song & Sai Yang, 2020. "Gender disparities in the field of economics," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 125(2), pages 1477-1498, November.
    29. Giovanni Abramo & Ciriaco Andrea D’Angelo & Flavia Di Costa, 2018. "The effects of gender, age and academic rank on research diversification," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 114(2), pages 373-387, February.
    30. Andrea Diem & Stefan C. Wolter, 2011. "The Use of Bibliometrics to Measure Research Performance in Education Sciences," Economics of Education Working Paper Series 0066, University of Zurich, Department of Business Administration (IBW), revised May 2013.
    31. Jung Cheol Shin & William K. Cummings, 2010. "Multilevel analysis of academic publishing across disciplines: research preference, collaboration, and time on research," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 85(2), pages 581-594, November.
    32. Murayama, Kota & Nirei, Makoto & Shimizu, Hiroshi, 2015. "Management of science, serendipity, and research performance: Evidence from a survey of scientists in Japan and the U.S," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 44(4), pages 862-873.
    33. Varsha Singh, 2018. "Comparing research productivity of returnee-PhDs in science, engineering, and the social sciences," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 115(3), pages 1241-1252, June.
    34. Dejan Pajić, 2015. "Globalization of the social sciences in Eastern Europe: genuine breakthrough or a slippery slope of the research evaluation practice?," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 102(3), pages 2131-2150, March.
    35. Aliakbar Akbaritabar & Niccolò Casnici & Flaminio Squazzoni, 2018. "The conundrum of research productivity: a study on sociologists in Italy," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 114(3), pages 859-882, March.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Chunhai Gao & Sabika Khalid & NGUYEN Van Thang & Endale Tadesse, 2023. "Comparing Apples With Apples: Women Faculty Research Productivity in Vietnamese Higher Education," SAGE Open, , vol. 13(3), pages 21582440231, August.
    2. J. M. Santos & H. Horta & H. Luna, 2022. "The relationship between academics’ strategic research agendas and their preferences for basic research, applied research, or experimental development," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 127(7), pages 4191-4225, July.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Wu, Jiang & Ou, Guiyan & Liu, Xiaohui & Dong, Ke, 2022. "How does academic education background affect top researchers’ performance? Evidence from the field of artificial intelligence," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 16(2).
    2. Marek Kwiek, 2018. "High research productivity in vertically undifferentiated higher education systems: Who are the top performers?," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 115(1), pages 415-462, April.
    3. Abramo, Giovanni & Aksnes, Dag W. & D’Angelo, Ciriaco Andrea, 2021. "Gender differences in research performance within and between countries: Italy vs Norway," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 15(2).
    4. Perlin, Marcelo S. & Santos, André A.P. & Imasato, Takeyoshi & Borenstein, Denis & Da Silva, Sergio, 2017. "The Brazilian scientific output published in journals: A study based on a large CV database," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 11(1), pages 18-31.
    5. Rørstad, Kristoffer & Aksnes, Dag W., 2015. "Publication rate expressed by age, gender and academic position – A large-scale analysis of Norwegian academic staff," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 9(2), pages 317-333.
    6. Dag W. Aksnes & Fredrik Niclas Piro & Kristoffer Rørstad, 2019. "Gender gaps in international research collaboration: a bibliometric approach," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 120(2), pages 747-774, August.
    7. Lars Herberholz & Berthold U. Wigger, 2020. "Efficiency of European Universities: A Comparison of Peers," CESifo Working Paper Series 8044, CESifo.
    8. Balázs Győrffy & Gyöngyi Csuka & Péter Herman & Ádám Török, 2020. "Is there a golden age in publication activity?—an analysis of age-related scholarly performance across all scientific disciplines," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 124(2), pages 1081-1097, August.
    9. Bonaccorsi, Andrea & Belingheri, Paola & Secondi, Luca, 2021. "The research productivity of universities. A multilevel and multidisciplinary analysis on European institutions," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 15(2).
    10. Andrea Bonaccorsi & Luca Secondi, 2017. "The determinants of research performance in European universities: a large scale multilevel analysis," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 112(3), pages 1147-1178, September.
    11. Andrea Mervar & Maja Jokić, 2022. "Core-periphery nexus in the EU social sciences: bibliometric perspective," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 127(10), pages 5793-5817, October.
    12. , Aisdl, 2021. "Top economics universities and research institutions in Vietnam: evidence from the SSHPA dataset," OSF Preprints xvnkj, Center for Open Science.
    13. Maaike Verbree & Edwin Horlings & Peter Groenewegen & Inge Weijden & Peter Besselaar, 2015. "Organizational factors influencing scholarly performance: a multivariate study of biomedical research groups," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 102(1), pages 25-49, January.
    14. Huan Li & Xi Yang & Xinlan Cai, 2022. "Academic spin-off activities and research performance: the mediating role of research collaboration," The Journal of Technology Transfer, Springer, vol. 47(4), pages 1037-1069, August.
    15. Andrea Diem & Stefan C. Wolter, 2011. "The Use of Bibliometrics to Measure Research Performance in Education Sciences," Economics of Education Working Paper Series 0066, University of Zurich, Department of Business Administration (IBW), revised May 2013.
    16. Loarne-Lemaire, Séverine Le & Bertrand, Gaël & Razgallah, Meriam & Maalaoui, Adnane & Kallmuenzer, Andreas, 2021. "Women in innovation processes as a solution to climate change: A systematic literature review and an agenda for future research," Technological Forecasting and Social Change, Elsevier, vol. 164(C).
    17. Cassidy R. Sugimoto & Thomas J. Sugimoto & Andrew Tsou & Staša Milojević & Vincent Larivière, 2016. "Age stratification and cohort effects in scholarly communication: a study of social sciences," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 109(2), pages 997-1016, November.
    18. Zhang, Mengya & Zhang, Gupeng & Liu, Yun & Zhai, Xiaorong & Han, Xinying, 2020. "Scientists’ genders and international academic collaboration: An empirical study of Chinese universities and research institutes," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 14(4).
    19. Regina Baby Sesay & Sheku Seppeh & Mohamed Kpangay, 2020. "Factors Influencing Research Productivity at Njala University: A Count Regression Approach," International Journal of Research and Scientific Innovation, International Journal of Research and Scientific Innovation (IJRSI), vol. 7(7), pages 104-118, July.
    20. Marek Kwiek, 2020. "Internationalists and locals: international research collaboration in a resource-poor system," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 124(1), pages 57-105, July.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:spr:scient:v:127:y:2022:i:7:d:10.1007_s11192-022-04324-7. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.springer.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.