Where demographics meets scientometrics: towards a dynamic career analysis

Abstract

In an earlier exercise some demographic methods were reformulated for application in a scientometric context. Age-pyramids based on annual publication output and citation impact was supplemented by the change of the mean age of the publications in the h-core at any time. Although the method was introduced to shed some demographic---scientometric light on the career of individual researchers, the second component, i.e., the age dynamics of the h-core can however be applied to higher levels of aggregation as well. However, the found paradigmatic shapes and patterns do not only characterise individual careers and positions, but are also typical of life cycles and subject-specific peculiarities. In the present study, the proposed approach is used to visualise the careers of scientists active in different fields of the sciences and social sciences and notably the second component, the h-core dynamics, is extended to the analysis of scientific journals from the same fields. In addition to the dynamics of productivity and citation impact, the evolution of co-authorship patterns of the same scientists is studied to capture another facet of individual academic careers.