Deepening the Effects of the Academic Inbreeding: Its Impact on Individual and Institutional Research Productivity

Engin Karadag () and S. Koza Ciftci ()
Additional contact information
Engin Karadag: Akdeniz University
S. Koza Ciftci: Akdeniz University

Research in Higher Education, 2022, vol. 63, issue 6, No 4, 1015-1036

Abstract: Abstract In this study, the effects of academic inbreeding on individual and institutional research productivity are examined to understand its impact as a recruitment policy. Over the past decade, in particular, there has been growing awareness of the problems posed by inbreeding in higher education. This study aims to expand on this awareness through an analysis of the prevalence of academic kinship in the Turkish higher education system, as well as the effects of inbreeding on the research productivity of academics and on their total research output. Unlike previous studies, the present study tests three distinct descriptions of inbreeding. The analyses in the study are performed on (1) the data records of 88,162 doctorate-holding faculty members’ nationally published articles and internationally published articles publications (Web of Science) from 203 Turkish universities; (2) their international citations; and (3) the projects they managed during the 2020–2021 academic year. Random effects estimator analyses were used the with multivariate negative binomial logit hurdle to account for institutional and individual differences. The findings indicate a high level of academic inbreeding in Turkish higher education. More specifically, the level was found to be 41%, which is one of the highest rates reported in the literature. Moreover, the findings suggest a negative impact of academic inbreeding on individual and institutional research productivity. In this respect, regardless of the field of study, inbred academics have lower number of national and internationally published articles, citations, and project management experiences than non-inbred researchers. In addition, it was found that the rate of academic inbreeding has a significant effect on universities’ research productivity. Given these results, it can be stated that academic inbreeding has a detrimental effect on higher education.

Keywords: Higher education; Academic inbreeding; Research productivity; Scientific article; Citations; Project management (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s11162-021-09670-8 Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:reihed:v:63:y:2022:i:6:d:10.1007_s11162-021-09670-8

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer.com/journal/11162

DOI: 10.1007/s11162-021-09670-8

Access Statistics for this article

Research in Higher Education is currently edited by Robert K. Toutkoushian

More articles in Research in Higher Education from Springer, Association for Institutional Research
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().