Postgraduate students bring in grants and beef up their supervisors' publication records.
Or, as Dr. Mike Webster, an ornithologist and a beer enthusiast at Washington State University in Pullman, said, maybe "those with poor publication records are drowning their sorrows".
If a faculty member's performance were based on his contribution to the quality of education, publication records would not be considered when decisions about contract renewals, tenure and salaries are made.
After learning that male applicants were much more likely than female applicants to succeed, they sued to get the data behind the decisions and then analyzed the 114 applicants' publication records.
When Armstrong and the Drake University professor Raymond Hubbard followed publication records at sixteen American Psychological Association journals over a two-year period, comparing rejected to published papers — the journals' editors had agreed to share submitted materials — they found that those about controversial topics were reviewed far more harshly.
But on one critically important metric — how hot the planet will get from a doubling of the pre-industrial concentration of greenhouse gases, a k a "climate sensitivity" — some climate researchers with substantial publication records are shifting toward the lower end of the warming spectrum.
Differences in "productivity" (publication records) can explain about 60% of this differential.
As it stands scientists are measured, rightly or wrongly, by their publication records.
After all that filtering, they ended up with publication records of 25,604 scientists.
For scientists in academia, research publication records speak to their track record in the field.
Using the MEDLINE database, they compiled publication records for each lab.
