And, not or: Quality, quantity in scientific publishing.

ABSTRACT: Scientists often perceive a trade-off between quantity and quality in scientific publishing: finite amounts of time and effort can be spent to produce few high-quality papers or subdivided to produce many papers of lower quality. Despite this perception, previous studies have indicated the opposite relationship, in which productivity (publishing more papers) is associated with increased paper quality (usually measured by citation accumulation). We examine this question in a novel way, comparing members of the National Academy of Sciences with themselves across years, and using a much larger dataset than previously analyzed. We find that a member's most highly cited paper in a given year has more citations in more productive years than in in less productive years. Their lowest cited paper e

SUBMITTER: Michalska-Smith MJ 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5453441 | biostudies-literature | 2017

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature