To move or to be promoted: Examining the effect of promotions and academic mobility on professors' productivity and impact

Abstract

Promotions and academic mobility are trajectory-altering events in a researcher's career. This paper compiles a unique large data set and investigates publication and citation differences between two groups of researchers: the ones who are mobile and their counterparts who stay at a university with a promotion. This paper finds that mobile researchers often have a lesser productivity increase than their post-promotion counterparts. The difference is largely driven by male professors in physical science and clinical health fields moving from more research-intensive to less research-intensive institutions. In contrast, the citational impact differences between the two groups are largely minimal.