Publication productivity and professional position: Cross-national evidence on the role of organizations

Studies of stratification in science have increasingly accepted the idea that science is a highly stratified & elitist system with skewed distributions of productivity & rewards. Attempts to explain the higher productivity of higher status scientists by pointing to their greater ease of publication were not supported by the data in some recent studies. It is argued that greater ease of coauthorship is the major variable explaining productivity differences within research laboratories. Comparative data from 1,222 research units & 4,057 scientists in 6 European countries show upward movement within a laboratory's hierarchy to be associated with a change from goal- executing to goal-setting research functions & with increasing access to project money & scientific manpower. Goal-setting tasks allow a scientist to be identified with research results at a lower cost in time expended. 2 Tables, 11 Figures. Modified HA.