Reopening the black box of career age and research performance

Abstract

Prior studies have a debate on whether research performance will be affected by age. Some researchers suggest that scientist’s career age will positively affect research performance. For instance, for senior faculty with the later career years, their publications only slightly decline than highly productive faculty members, suggesting the statement of “Matthew effect” in science. In contrast, some studies point out that research productivity will decline with age, showing “a loss of vigor” in scientific research. This research question is still remain unanswered. The purpose of this study is to reexamine this association between career age and research performance, measured by number of publications, top-tier publications, and the h-index. The empirical study was conducted on a sample of 137 scholars from the Web of Knowledge. The results indicate that the relationship between career age and research performance is not a linear, nearly an inverted U-shaped curve.