Saturday, 5 February 2011

Academic Reputation Survey - results

Last year I was one of the respondents in Thomson Reuters global Academic Reputation Survey, which was used as part of the foundation for the 2010 Times Higher Education World University Rankings. See Report of findings for the full report.

Excerpts:
* 13,388 respondents
* of which 16% said Western Europe was their region of greatest familiarity
* of which 3,790 scholars were based in Europe
* of which 69% were academic staff, 15% research staff, 7% senior institutional leadership, 6% graduate/post-graduate students, and 2% teaching staff
* All in all, the average respondent reported spending 52% of the worktime doing research, 31% teaching and 18% administering. While senior institutional leadership spends 48% of the time administering, and 32% doing research, research staff spent 81% of the time doing research, teaching staff spent 57% of the time teaching, and graduate/post-graduate students spent 81% doing research, 13% teaching and 6% administering. Academic staff, the majority group (9,219 respondents), spent 46% researching, 37% teaching and 18% administering.
* of which 78% were male - most (87%) in Engineering & technology; fewest (69%) in Social Sciences
* of which only 779 identified as Arts & Humanities, the smallest group (Social Sciences and Life Sciences were both represented by 2000+ respondents)
* Research papers published: In average, a respondent said to have published 53.4 research papers (median: 30; meaning that a few publishes a lot and increases the average). Those with tenure had in average published 64.9 papers (median: 40), those without tenure in average 29.2 (median: 15). Even among those without tenure, however, 5% had published 100+ (with tenure: 17%). Males had published in average 58.9 papers (median: 32), females 33.5 (median: 20) - note that the survey says nothing about age distribution, which might explain part of the gender gap.
* Of senior institutional leadership, who had an average of 101.7 published papers (median: 70), 59% had published 50+ research papers and 34% 100+. Of academic staff, 33% had published 0-20 papers and 31% 20-50. Of research staff, 60% had published 0-20 papers, and of teaching staff 61%. Of graduate/post-graduate students, who had an average of 8.6 papers published (median: 6), 94% had published 0-20 papers and 6% 20-50.

Thomson Reuters remarks that respondents from Arts & Humanities were poorly represented in line with the poor publishing frequency compared to scholars from harder sciences (I wonder how the numbers would look like if a distinction was introduced between single authorship and co-authorship; or if the number of pages published had been counted...).

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