Academic generations and academic work: patterns of attitudes, behaviors, and research productivity of Polish academics after 1989

Abstract

This paper focuses on a generational change taking place in the Polish academic profession: a change in behaviors and attitudes between two groups of academics. One was socialized to academia under the communist regime and the other entered the profession in the post-1989 transition period. Academics of all age groups are beginning to learn how tough the competition for research funding is, but young academics ('academics under 40'), being the target of recent policy initiatives, need to learn faster. Current reforms present a clear preferred image for a new generation of Polish academics: highly motivated, embedded in international research networks, publishing mostly internationally, and heavily involved in the competition for academic recognition and research funding. In the long run, without such a radical approach, any international competition between young Polish academics (with a low research orientation and high teaching hours) and their young Western European colleagues (with a high research orientation and low teaching hours) seems inconceivable, as our data on the average academic productivity clearly demonstrate. The quantitative background of this paper comes from 3704 returned questionnaires and the qualitative background from 60 semi-structured in-depth interviews. The paper takes a European comparative approach and contrasts Poland with 10 Western European countries (using 17,211 returned questionnaires).

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Scientometrics of Forest Health and Tree Diseases: An Overview

“…(i) to examine temporal trends in the number of publications on a certain topic [49][50][51], (ii) to investigate the spatial distribution of the research attention given to a certain topic [52][53][54], (iii) to study the relative number of papers dealing with various research areas [55][56][57], (iv) to analyze the reception of papers (or items therein, e.g., anecdotes) by posterity [58][59][60], (v) to assess the productivity of researchers and its likely quality [61][62][63], (vi) to compare the research performance and diversity of institutions and countries [64][65][66], (vii) to document patterns and determinants of the length of peer review processes [67][68][69], and (viii) to study interdisciplinary collaboration activities [70][71][72].…”