ABSTRACT
Academic inbreeding: new insights for academic based research and recruitment
Hugo Horta
IN+ Center for Innovation, Technology and Policy Research
Avenida Rovisco Pais, 1049-001, Lisbon, Portugal
hugo.horta@dem.ist.utl.pt
The manuscript “Academic inbreeding: new insights for academic based research and
recruitment” analyzes the impact of academic inbreeding in relation to academic
research practices and productivity, and proposes a new conceptual framework for its
analysis. The analysis follows the recent contributions of Horta, Veloso and Grediaga
(2010) on the effects of academic inbreeding on scientific productivity and on research
information sourcing, but focuses more deeply on the role of early stage
research/academic mobility. Drawing from the relevant literature, including the
seminal work of Berelson (1960), Pelz and Andrews (1966), Dutton (1980), Shimbori
(1981), and more recently of Yamanoi (2005), Birnbaum (2005), and Cruz Castro and
Menendez (2010), the study performs an empirical analysis which tests literature
assumptions, (e.g., inbred academics vs silver-corded academics), while exploring the
role of academic mobility at an early stage in the academic career.
The first novel analysis that the study brings forth is the confirmation that “silvercorded" academics (those who are working at the same university where they
obtained their PhD, but that had been employed elsewhere right after concluding the
PhD) cannot be considered as inbred academics. The academic productivity and
information exchange behaviors of silver-corded are similar to those of non-inbreds
rather than to inbreds. This empirical finding clarifies which academics should be
considered academic inbreds, while providing a sound methodological instrument for
the future analysis of academic inbreeding. A second analysis, still based in untested
literature assumptions, analyzes Dutton’s (1980) arguments, which hypothesized that
those academics that are not inbreds but which only moved once in the whole of their
academic career would have similar information exchange behaviors and scientific
productivity to that of inbred academics. This would be as such because the author,
concerned with low levels of mobility in higher education systems, expected that long
periods of immobility at one institution (even if mobility would have happened from
one university to another) would have similar effects in terms of scholarly behaviors
for inbreds and non-inbreds. The resulting empirical analysis in this study shows that
academics that only moved once in the academic career have similar information
exchange behaviors and scientific productivity to that of inbred academics. This
suggests that mobility throughout the academic career needs to be fostered
notwithstanding if the academic is inbred or not.
The third and novel analysis proposed in this study, aims at a conceptual contribution
to the literature. It takes into consideration that the conceptual understanding of
academic inbreeding was theoretically established in the 1960s, and that higher
education and science systems have changed considerably since then. In particular, the
position of the postdoctorate – strongly associated with mobility at an early academic
career stage - emerged in recent decades when it was a rather unusual position several
decades ago (with the exception of few specific disciplinary fields). Based on the
“emergence” of the postdoctorate, we analyze academic inbreeding differentiating
those academic inbreds that never moved from their Alma mater (which we
designated as “pure-inbreds”) and those that fit the traditional inbreeding concept,
but had some degree of inter-institutional mobility through the postdoctorate or while
performing their Ph.D. The results indicate that mobility at an early academic career
stage is absolutely critical even for academic inbreds. However, this mobility is not
sufficient to mitigate the detrimental effects of academic inbreeding.
The analysis of this study is based on data from a survey applied in 2008 in Portugal,
which focused on all academics working at Portuguese universities that held a doctoral
degree. The analysis is regression based – it uses a negative binomial regression for
analyzing the scientific productivity and a linear regression to analyze the information
exchange score. Both regressions use robust standard errors and fixed effects for
higher education institutions and scientific fields. Moreover, the regressions make use
of key sets of controls used in the scientific productivity literature (e.g., age, gender).
Overall, the findings of this study emphasize the need for mobility throughout
scientific and academic careers. The lesser mobile academics have more inward
oriented information exchange dynamics and a lower scientific productivity. In the
same framework, the analysis also indicates that the information exchange and
scientific productivity of academics that changed institutions only once do not differ
substantially from that of “mobile inbred academics”. The study findings also support
previous findings showing that academic inbreeding is detrimental to scientific
productivity, underlying the need for institutional recruitment policies to curtail this
practice.
References:
Berelson, B., 1960. Graduate Education in the United States, McGraw-Hill, New York.
Birnbaum, R., 2005. Professor and Sensei: The construction of faculty roles in the
United States and Japan. Higher Education Forum, 2, 71-92.
Cruz-Castro, L., San-Menéndez, L., 2010. Mobility versus job stability: assessing tenure
and productivity outcomes. Research Policy, 39, 1, 27-38.
Dutton, J.E., “The impact of inbreeding and immobility on the professional role and
scholarly performance of academic scientists”, Paper presented at the annual meeting
of the American Educational Research Association, Boston, 7-11 April 1980.
Horta, H., Veloso, F., Grediaga, R., 2010. Navel gazing: Academic inbreeding and
scientific productivity. Management Science, 56, 3, 414-429.
Pelz, D.C., Andrews, F.M., 1966. Scientists in Organizations, Wiley, New York.
Shimbori, M., 1981. The Japanese Academic Profession. Higher Education, 10, 75-87.
Yamanoi, A., 2005. The academic marketplace in Japan: Inbreeding, Grades and
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