The research productivity of academic psychologists: assessment,trends, and best practice recommendations

Research productivity affects the careers of academic psychologists. Unfortunately, there is a surprising lack of consensus on productivity’s meaning, measurement, and how to compare the productivity of one academic psychologist to another. In the present study, we review academic productivity research within psychology, and using a sample of 673 psychologists, compute six indexes of productivity. Most productivity metrics (publication count, citation count, or some combination of the two) were substantially interrelated and one (Integrated Research Productivity Index) was independent from years in the field. Female psychologists were equally as productive as male psychologists after accounting for years in the field, and pre-tenure psychologists showed steeper change-over-time productivity slopes than post-tenure psychologists. Based on these findings, we provide recommendations for the use and measurement of academic research productivity.