Abstract for: A Dynamic Simulation Model of Academic Publications and Citations

In academia, the two main measures of research performance are publications and citations. These two measures in a sense quantify the research success of scientists and academic units. Perception of these performance measures can create pressures on researchers and cause different behaviors in different conditions. The aim of this study is to examine the behaviors of researchers in response to the dynamics of publication and citation pressures. A model including faculty members in a department, their publications and citations has been constructed by using system dynamics methodology. An important factor that determines citations for a paper is the quality of the paper. Reputation of an academic unit is established as a result of citations that the unit receives over time. There is an important feedback loop so that the reputation in turn influences the citations the units will enjoy. A researcher, who has citation pressure on him, would be forced to produce higher quality papers for getting more citations. On the other hand, publication pressure would cause the researcher to produce lower-quality papers in higher numbers, in shorter times. The main decisions of researchers are thus modeled through allocation of researchers’ time in research activities and time devoted on each research. The results obtained agree with our dynamic hypothesis and qualitative information about the behavior of actual academic units.