Academic Inbreeding in Austria: Anonymized Institutional Staff Records and Researcher-Level Analytical Data

This dataset accompanies a study examining the association between academic inbreeding and research performance among professors at Austrian universities and universities of applied sciences (UASs). It contains two complementary datasets: de-identified institutional staff records and a researcher-level analytical dataset used in the statistical analyses. 1. Institutional staff records (staff_records.csv) The institutional staff records were collected from the official websites of Austrian universities and UASs. They contain information on professorial titles and inferred research fields derived from institutional organizational information. Direct personal identifiers, including names, contact information, personal website links, ORCID identifiers, and Scopus identifiers, have been removed. Institution names have been replaced with coded identifiers. The dataset retains information relevant to the identification and classification of professorial positions. 2. Researcher-level analytical data (author_regression_input.csv) The analytical dataset contains 7,842 professor-level observations and 47 variables used to examine the association between academic inbreeding and research performance. It was constructed by linking institutional staff records to Scopus publication histories, consolidating multiple institutional appointments belonging to the same professor, and aggregating publication-level bibliometric information to the researcher level. The dataset includes the following research-performance indicators: Relative citation impact: The mean weighted Hazen percentile rank (mwPR) and the proportions of publications among the top 10%, 5%, and 1% most highly cited publications (PP(top 10%), PP(top 5%), and PP(top 1%)). These indicators are normalized by research field and publication year, using the 27 major subject areas of the Scopus All Science Journal Classification (ASJC). Publication-level citation-impact indicators are available for 1996–2023. The mwPR represents the mean publication-level weighted Hazen percentile rank across a professor's publications, while the PP indicators represent the corresponding proportions of highly cited publications. Absolute publication output: The total number of publications in a professor's complete observed publication history and the fractionally counted numbers of publications among the field- and year-specific top 10%, 5%, and 1% (P(top 10%), P(top 5%), and P(top 1%)). Unlike the citation-impact indicators, total publication output is calculated from the complete publication history without fractional counting. The dataset also contains the following explanatory variables: Academic inbreeding: A binary indicator identifying professors affiliated with at least one of their current institutions during the first two years of their observed publication career and again on their most recent publication. Academic age and title: The number of years between the first and last observed publication and the professor's academic title category. Academic mobility: Domestic and international mobility measured as the number of publication years in which the professor was not affiliated with their inferred home institution, distinguished by the absence or presence of an international affiliation. Institutional co-affiliations: The proportion of publications on which the professor held affiliations with at least two distinct institutions, following harmonization to parent organizations. Collaboration: The mean number of coauthors per publication. Research-field composition: Fractional publication shares across the 27 ASJC major subject areas. First publication year: The year of the professor's first observed publication. Academic inbreeding is operationalized using publication-affiliation histories rather than the conventional definition based on the institution awarding the doctoral degree. A professor is classified as academically inbred if at least one institution associated with their professorial appointment appears among both their early-career affiliations (first publication year and the following calendar year) and the affiliations recorded on their most recent publication. The researcher-level analytical dataset contains no names or Scopus identifiers and provides the input data for reproducing the regression analyses presented in the accompanying study. The source code for data processing and statistical analyses is available separately.