Analytic model for academic research productivity having factors, interactions and implications

Abstract

Financial support is dear in academia and will tighten further. How can the research mission be accomplished within new restraints? A model is presented for evaluating source components of academic research productivity. It comprises six factors: funding; investigator quality; efficiency of the research institution; the research mix of novelty, incremental advancement, and confirmatory studies; analytic accuracy; and passion. Their interactions produce output and patterned influences between factors. Strategies for optimizing output are enabled.

Figure 1.

A schematic summary of the factor model presented. Variables influencing the output can be nested within six parental conceptual containers, the “alphas” arrayed at the top of this schematic. The model is not additive, but treats alphas as multiplicative factors. A deficiency in an alpha will impair the output regardless of improvements made in other, more visible and popular input variables. Productivity is a rate and is an expression of efficiency that is independently meaningful only when made relative to a reference unit; it is not equivalent to total production or output.