A causational analysis of scholars' years of active academic careers vis-à-vis their academic productivity and academic influence

摘要

Taking the scholarly activities of 73 doctoral program mentors working at the Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences & Peking Union Medical College (the CAMS & PUMC) as a sample of our investigative survey,we tried using such statistical methods as the analysis of variance (ANOVA),factor analysis and correlation analysis to compare the different characteristics of scholarship assessment of Chinese medical scholars as exhibited in their published papers in domestic and foreign journals.Our research findings show that citations per paper and A-index are more suitable for assessing the highly accomplished senior Chinese medical professionals (e.g.academicians) for their domestic and international scholarship attainment.In contrast,the m-quotient is not deemed appropriate to assess their academic influence both at home and abroad.Upon our further analysis of 6 evaluative indicators,we noticed that these indicators might be applied in two different aspects:One is from the viewpoint of Chinese scholars' academic influence at home,which has been evaluated mainly from the perspective of "total" amount and "average" amount of both publications and citations.The other is from their academic impact embodied by the means of documents retrieved from the Web of Science,which is mainly assessed from the two viewpoints of publications and citations.It is suggested that the accumulated time-length of a given scholar's active engagement in professional practice in a specific subject area be taken into consideration while assessing a researcher's performance at home and abroad.