Knowledge Production, Publication Productivity, and Intimate Academic Partnerships

Abstract

Collaboration and engagement in a community of scholars is instrumental to scholarly productivity, particularly among prolific scholars who sustain a commitment to scholarly research and writing over the course of many years (Austin & Baldwin, 1991). Though many collegial relationships are long-term and involve both a personal and professional dimension, there has been little acknowledgment in the research literature of the impact on scholarly productivity of collaborative relationships among academics who are married or who share an intimate relationship and a household. The 1997 publication, Academic Couples: Problems and Promises, edited by Marianne Ferber and Jane Loeb, provided the first readily available documentation of the proportion of faculty with a spouse or partner who is also employed in higher education. Reflecting on the impact of the increase in the proportion of doctorates awarded to women and the easing of anti-nepotism policies at some institutions in the last twenty-five years, it is estimated that of faculty with a partner or spouse, 35% of men and 40% of women have a partner who is also an academic (Astin & Milem, 1997). There are significant variations by both race and academic field in the proportion of faculty with an academic spouse or partner. Findings from a national survey of senior faculty I conducted in 1996 provide support for the argument that formal and informal collaboration among spouse or partners in various aspects of scholarship is not uncommon. Using a sampling method intentionally designed to reach prolific scholarly writers, 750 senior faculty at a random sample of 22 public and private research institutions, matched by rank, department, and sex, were surveyed about collaboration in the research and publication process, including with a spouse or partner. Of the 263 respondents, 64% had given or received feedback from a spouse or partner about a draft of a publication. Twenty-two percent of the respondents had coauthored at least one journal article, book, or monograph with a spouse or partner. There were no statistically significant differences by sex in the percentage of respondents who had given or received feedback about a publication or who had coauthored a scholarly publication with a spouse or partner. The names of prominent couples whose personal and professional lives are linked come readily to mind. These include literary and artistic couples, such as Virginia Woolf and Leonard Woolf and Georgia O'Keeffe and Alfred Stieglitz; and eminent examples from scientific fields, such as Margaret Mead and Gregory Bateson in anthropology and Marie Curie and Pierre Curie in physics. Though less common than other forms of scholarly collaboration, exploring the reciprocal impact of familial relationships on scholarly productivity offers another way to investigate the social and material conditions that contribute to creativity and scientific innovation and how they vary by gender. The impact of an academic partner on scholarly productivity would be expected to vary by a number of factors, including the amount of overlap in research areas and skills. The purpose of this article is to identify patterns of coauthorship among academics who have coauthored with a spouse or partner and to determine how they are perceived to be associated with scholarly productivity. I use the term scholarly productivity, rather than research productivity, because not all scholarly publications are empirically based. Scholarly productivity includes a qualitative dimension, to which I will refer as knowledge production or innovation; and a quantitative dimension, to which I will refer as publication productivity. Coauthorship patterns identify situations where having an academic partner is most likely to have a significant impact on scholarly productivity. The study does not extend to include a discussion of other important aspects of faculty roles, such as teaching and service. …