Modeling the dynamics of academic publications and citations

Abstract

Publication performance of researchers in scienti c institutions is evaluated with some performance criteria for purposes like promotion, tenure or funding decisions. However, there is a common concern that measuring research performance, if not properly done, may damage science. Researchers tend to change their research practices when they are asked to be good at some particular measure. In this study, a dynamic simulation model is developed for analyzing the change in publication practices of researchers towards improving the performance measures used. Reputation of the faculty, skill level, total time devoted to research activities, acceptance fraction of the papers by the journals, publication and citation pressure on the researchers are the basic variables in the model. The model is constructed and calibrated using Bo§aziçi University Engineering Faculty data. The validation of the model is established by standard structure and behavior tests. Scenario and policy analysis are performed with the simulation model to nd good policies, which will carry the engineering school to a better position in academic world, while not damaging the scienti c work of researchers. Forcing researchers to publish in high numbers results in numerous spurious publications with lower citations. Upgrading standards by introducing high benchmarks makes researchers increase the time that they devote to research activities. Allowing researchers spend more time on research activities by easing their loads is found to be an e ective managerial policy. Surprisingly, encouraging the faculty to give more internal citations provides a high reputation for the school in the end and thanks to high reputation level, both citation receiving rates and publication production performances improve. Encouraging mostly the high quality research is found to be a good policy, by generating more high quality publications compared to low quality ones, hence increased citations..