Tenure and research trajectories

Area of Science:

• Academic research
• Faculty career trajectories
• Scholarly publishing

Background:

• Tenure is a critical component of the US academic system.
• The impact of tenure on faculty research output and career progression is not fully understood.
• Existing theories suggest tenure may influence research through selection, incentives, or encouraging risk-taking.

Purpose of the Study:

• To empirically investigate the relationship between tenure and faculty research trajectories.
• To analyze how tenure affects research output, novelty, and impact across different academic disciplines.
• To provide data-driven insights into the role of tenure in academic careers.

Main Methods:

• Integrated data from seven sources, covering over 12,000 faculty members across 15 disciplines.
• Traced individual faculty publication rates and research characteristics over time.
• Compared research trajectories based on tenure status and disciplinary field.

Main Results:

• Faculty publication rates increase during the tenure track, peaking before tenure is awarded.
• Post-tenure research output varies by discipline: high in lab-based fields (e.g., biology, chemistry), declining in non-lab-based fields (e.g., mathematics, sociology).
• Tenured faculty engage in more novel, high-risk research, though with a potential decrease in citation impact.

Conclusions:

• Research trajectories are strongly linked to the tenure year.
• Tenure acts as a significant turning point, influencing both the quantity and nature of academic research.
• Findings offer an empirical foundation for understanding the tenure system's effects on scientific productivity and innovation.