Characterizing scholar popularity: A case study in the Computer Science research community

Abstract

A common live debate among scholars regards the popularity, productivity and impact of research. This paper aims to contribute to such discussion by quantifying the impact of various academic features on a scholar popularity throughout her career. Using a list of over 2 million publications in the Computer Science research area obtained from two large digital libraries, we analyze how features that capture the number and rate of publications, number and quality of publication venues, and the importance of the scholar in the co-authorship network relate to the scholar popularity. We also investigate the temporal dynamics of scholar popularity, identifying a few common profiles, and characterizing scholars in each profile according to their academic features.