Determining factors of publication productivity of Japanese physical scientists

As an approach to researching the process of producing academic information, this paper focuses on scholars who are producers of academic information, and examines various factors which determine scientists' publication productivity. Various factors found in previous research can be classified into three types; six factors are then selected from these three types: age, prestige of graduate school, kind of degree, institutional affiliation, position at the institution and "the mean number of authors per article". About 100 Japanese physical scientists, their main publication records and these six factors are then examined. The findings are as follows: (1) For each factor, groups who have a high level of productivity are scientists who; a) are in their forties, b) graduated from seven major national universities, c) hold a doctorate in engineering, d) belong to seven major national universities or national laboratories, e) are professors or assistants and f) have a "mean number of authors" of eight. (2) As a result of the Quantification theory I with six factors, it was found that the multiple correlation coefficient is 0.63, and that "mean number of authors" has the most influence on publication productivity.