A study of publication trajectories of the Brazilian Computer Science community

Abstract: The average faculty productivity have been described as a rapid rise-short peak-gradual decline pattern. Way et al. (2017) have studied this pattern for faculty careers in Computer Science in North America using a piecewise linear model. In this paper, we use a similar methodology and study trajectories (N = 20655) of the Brazilian Computer Science community. First, we have evaluated how the median publication count of researchers is related to institution prestige and public vs. private administration. Second, we have studied how the annual publication rates have increased and its variation according to prestige ranks of institutions. Third, we have found the average trajectory can indeed be described as the canonical rapid increase and slower decrease in productivity. For individual trajectories of senior researchers we have observed only 4.5% of trajectories are well explained by the conventional narrative of rapid rise and gradual decline model. We also have found polynomial models of degrees 1 to 3 explain almost 63.1% of trajectories. The rest of trajectories are considered unstable and not well explained by neither of approaches.