| Abstract: |
This paper exploits a unique 2003-2011 large dataset, indexed by Thomson &
Reuters, consisting of 17.2 million disambiguated authors classified into 30
broad scientific fields, as well as the 48.2 million articles resulting from a
multiplying strategy in which any article co-authored by two or more persons
is wholly assigned as many times as necessary to each of them. We measure
individual productivity as the number of articles per person, and as the mean
citation per article per person in the same period. We focus on three types of
field productivity distributions, corresponding to successful authors with an
above average number of publications, as well as the population as a whole and
authors with above average productivity when productivity is defined as mean
citation per article per person. The main result is that, in spite of wide
differences in production and citation practices across fields, field
productivity distributions in these three cases share two important features:
(i) they are very similar across fields, and (ii) they are highly skewed
according to a robust index of skeweness, as well as the Characteristic Scores
and Scales approach. |