conference productivity areas—DC
and IPCV—are significantly different
from the bottom third—MIS, OR, BIO,
TH, ML, and DB—whereas the lowest
two—MIS and OR—are significantly
different from the top third—DC,
IPCV, ARCH, COMM, HCI, and SE, information not in Table 3.
If we consider the ratio of journal
productivity to total productivity, there
are basically two groups: BIO, MIS,
and, OR prefer journal publications to
conferences, with about 70% of their
production published in journals; the
differences from all other areas are significant. ML and TH represent an intermediary group that publishes almost
half its production in journals; the difference is statistically significant compared to most other areas.
Impact measures. Figure 2 includes
the mean and median citations rates
(citations per paper per year) for our
sample of randomly selected 100 papers (from 2006) from each area (in order of median citations rate); the third
column of Table 3 lists the compact letter display of the median citation rates
for each area.
MIS citations rates are not significantly different from the next four
higher rates—GRAPH, DB, BIO, and
HCI—in decreasing order. The two
lower-rate areas—ARCH and MM—are
significantly different from the third
lower-rate area—DC; the other areas
are in the same group, with no significant differences among them.
The citation numbers reflect an
interesting relation with productiv-
ity. The higher-productivity areas also
have lower median citation rates. The
correlation is moderately high and sig-
nificant (Spearman rho = −0.63, p-value
= 0.007). We use the Spearman rank
correlation (rho) to detect any mono-
tonic correlation between the vari-
ables, not just linear correlation. The
correlation is even higher for confer-
ence productivity (rho = −0.71, p-value
= 0.001). Thus, on the surface, in areas
like ARCH and MM, researchers write
many papers per year, especially con-
ference papers, but few other research-
ers cite them. One notable aspect of the
high-productivity/low-citation pattern
is that the high-productivity areas tend
to focus on conferences that, given the
usual restrictions on number of pages
in the publications, force authors to
cite only a few relevant papers. How-
ever, a regression of the citation rates
with both total productivity and pro-
portion of journal publication reveals
that only the negative coefficient of the
total production is significant.
table 3. compact letter display of total journal productivity and citations per paper per
year; the difference between any two areas is not statistically significant if they have any
letter in common.
area
AI
ArCH
BIO
C+PL
COMM
DB
DC
grAPH
HCI
IPCv
MIs
ML
MM
Or
se
seC
TH
average total
productivity
abcd
bcd
abcd
abcd
cd
ab
d
abcd
abcd
bcd
a
abcd
abcd
a
abcd
abcd
abc
average journal
productivity
ab
abc
d
b
cd
ab
abc
abc
abc
abc
abcd
a cd
abc
abcd
abc
abc
abc
median citations
per year
abc
de
ab f
ab f
ab f
fg
a c
b fg
abc
a c
g
b fg
d
c e
a c
abc
abc
figure 2. citations per paper per year (in order of median citation rate).
mean
median
10
8
citationsv/year
6
4
2
0