Study shows the pivotal role of a small minority of scientists in Poland

The authors of a new study published in the Journal of Informetrics show that the role of top performers as knowledge producers in Poland is as fundamental today as it was 10, 20, and 30 years ago.

The researchers examined the contribution of top performers to the total national research output from temporal (1992–2021) and disciplinary (15 STEMM disciplines) perspectives. A large population of all internationally visible Polish scientists (N=152,043) with their 587,558 articles was studied. Three classes of top performers (the upper 1%, 5%, and 10% of scientists in terms of publishing productivity) were examined separately within the disciplines and five 6-year periods.

Although the social and economic world experienced powerful transformations and academic science was undergoing the biggest shifts in its recent history, Polish top performers from 1992–2021 played a structurally similar, fundamental role. The top 1%, on average, account for 10% of the national research output (the 1/10 rule), and the top 10% account for almost 50% of the national research output (the 10/50 rule), with significant disciplinary variations.

This research is not cross-sectional, with results only being valid for a single point in time (e.g., for two to four years), much like in traditional academic profession surveys. With panel data, long-term processes can be examined. The proportions of contributions made by top performers hardly change over time, even if shorter time periods are used.

Top performers classes emerge in this research as heterogeneous classes in terms of gender and age groups. Women in the top 10% are responsible for about 35%–37% of all publications produced by women. In addition, the concentration of output is higher for men in the top 10% who are responsible for more than 50% of all publications produced by men.

To quantify the overrepresentation of men in the top performance classes from cross-disciplinary and temporal perspectives, a special index (the Relative Presence Index for men) was constructed. Men are overrepresented in all classes of top performers, and their overrepresentation increases when moving up the high-performance scale.

An econometric model identifies three important predictors that increase the chances of membership in the top 10%: gender, academic age, and publishing patterns. The chances of success are, on average, substantially higher for men with long publishing histories and involved in international research collaboration.

The role of this institutional characteristic compared with the role of individual characteristics in the model is relatively weak. Fixed effects analysis indicates that, over time, it is increasingly difficult to enter the top 10%, which testifies to the increasing competition in Polish academia.

More information:
Marek Kwiek et al, Top research performance in Poland over three decades: A multidimensional micro-data approach, Journal of Informetrics (2024). DOI: 10.1016/j.joi.2024.101595

Provided by Adam Mickiewicz University