Do senior faculty members produce fewer research publications than their younger colleagues? Evidence from Ph.D. granting institutions in the United States

Abstract

The aging of the professoriate throughout the end of the twentieth century and the early years of the 2000′s (both before and after the end of mandatory retirement in the United States, ca. 1994) has become a source of concern for some scholars and research administrators, who posit that the “greying” of the academy results in lower research activity and a decline in scientific advancement. Some published opinions concur that senior scholars’ research programs do not keep pace with those of their younger colleagues, but little quantitative evidence has been presented to evaluate that claim. In this study, we quantify senior faculty publication activity in six broad fields, comparing their publication rates to their younger colleagues across four modes of knowledge dissemination: journal articles, conference proceedings, books, and book chapters. Career publication activity does not follow the “peak and decline” pattern described in earlier studies. In most fields, journal article publication rates do not decline substantively with age (and in some cases article publication rates are higher among senior scholars), conference proceeding publication rates tend to decline with age, while book and chapter publication rates increase markedly with age. Overall, senior scholars maintain publishing activity levels and tend to shift their focus to the development and evolution of ideas through the publication of longer-format works as books and book chapters.