Network analysis for predicting academic impact

Dimitris Bertsimas, Erik Brynjolfsson, Shachar Reichman, John M. Silberholz

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference contributionpeer-review

Abstract

How are scholars ranked for promotion, tenure and honors? How can we improve the quantitative tools available for decision makers when making such decisions? Can we predict the academic impact of scholars and papers at early stages using quantitative tools? Current academic decisions (hiring, tenure, prizes) are mostly very subjective. In the era of "Big Data," a solid quantitative set of measurements should be used to support this decision process. This paper presents a method for predicting the probability of a paper being in the most cited papers using only data available at the time of publication. We find that highly cited papers have different structural properties and that these centrality measures are associated with increased odds of being in the top percentile of citation count. The paper also presents a method for predicting the future impact of researchers, using information available early in their careers. This model integrates information about changes in a young researcher's role in the citation network and co-authorship network and demonstrates how this improves predictions of their future impact. These results show that the use of quantitative methods can complement the qualitative decision-making process in academia and improve the prediction of academic impact.

Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationInternational Conference on Information Systems (ICIS 2013)
Subtitle of host publicationReshaping Society Through Information Systems Design
Pages2648-2657
Number of pages10
StatePublished - 2013
Externally publishedYes
EventInternational Conference on Information Systems, ICIS 2013 - Milan, Italy
Duration: 15 Dec 201318 Dec 2013

Publication series

NameInternational Conference on Information Systems (ICIS 2013): Reshaping Society Through Information Systems Design
Volume3

Conference

ConferenceInternational Conference on Information Systems, ICIS 2013
Country/TerritoryItaly
CityMilan
Period15/12/1318/12/13

Keywords

  • Academic impact
  • Analytics
  • Citation analysis
  • Networks

All Science Journal Classification (ASJC) codes

  • Computer Science Applications
  • Statistics, Probability and Uncertainty
  • Applied Mathematics
  • Library and Information Sciences

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