Cooperation and discrimination in academic publishing

Abstract

This thesis consists of four essays in collaboration and discrimination. The first essay examines the role of collaboration as a determinant of publication productivity in the field of economics, measured by means of citations, journal rank, and journal impact factor. The analysis employs cross-sectional data of 1,512 journal publications published in 2012 in 16 economics journals. The findings show a positive effect of team size on publication productivity, whereas research teams consisting of only one gender perform better in terms of research quality than gender-mixed teams. The analysis also indicates a negative relationship between female-dominated teams and research productivity. The second essay examines the impact of physical attractiveness on productivity. As literature found a strong impact on wages and career progression, it can be either due to discrimination in favour of good-looking people or can reflect an association between attractiveness and productivity. We utilise a context of academic publishing where there is no or limited face-to-face interaction. Using data on 2,800 authors, the results suggest that physical attractiveness has significantly important benefits. The third essay also considers the effect of physical attractiveness, as assessed based on pictures of top scientists, on their probability of winning the Nobel Prize. In contrast, the results show that attractiveness is negatively correlated with the probability of being awarded the Nobel, with the magnitude of this effect being not negligible. The fourth essay analyses the subsequent publication success (i.e., the probability to publish in top journals, the publication productivity) of the contenders in a best paper prize awarded at an academic conference to see whether the winners’ papers fare better than those that failed to get the prize, measured by rank and impact factor of the journal, and citations. We employ the data of nominees for the Distinguished CESifo Affiliate prize between 2008 and 2015. The findings indicate that winning has a positive effect on the quality of journals they published as well as the publication productivity, suggesting that scholars who succeed in their early stage of academia tend to success later compared to those who are not outstanding. This thesis contributes to the literature on publication productivity and discrimination in academia by extending the existing literature on these issues. In this context, we explore the determinants of research productivity in economics (e.g., gender, nationality, seniority and others) and how those characteristics impact on productivity. We also investigate the role of beauty, and the presence of appearance-based discrimination, in determining research productivity among mainstream academics. We then re-examine the role of physical attractiveness at the top of the distribution of productivity, among Nobel Prize candidates/winners. Finally, we examine inequality in scientific research outcomes and the role of the so-called Matthew Effect. The findings shed light on the issues of collaboration, discrimination and inequality in academia.