PONE-D-24-24540Human capital, research funding, and gender: Determinants of research productivity in German psychologyPLOS ONE

Dear Dr. Schröder,

Thank you for submitting your manuscript to PLOS ONE. After careful consideration, we feel that it has merit but does not fully meet PLOS ONE’s publication criteria as it currently stands. Therefore, we invite you to submit a revised version of the manuscript that addresses the points raised during the review process.

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We look forward to receiving your revised manuscript.

Kind regards,

Andrey Lovakov, Ph.D.

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

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Additional Editor Comments:

Below is a summary of the main points raised by the reviewers, together with suggestions for revision. Please address these suggestions and also other suggestions from the reviews below.

- Please clarify whether the study focuses on the sacred spark hypothesis, the cumulative advantage hypothesis, or integrates both. It would be helpful to clearly define the expected empirical patterns and hypotheses for each approach. Additionally, the role of the institutional environment, research funding, and gender should be more clearly addressed.

- Re-evaluate the selection of sources to ensure that they are relevant to the European context. Including more empirical findings from similar national contexts would strengthen the contextual relevance of your study.

- Consider the placement of international mobility within the institutional environment section. Discussing its wider implications, such as network expansion, may provide additional insights.

- Justify the choice of SSCI/SCIE articles and discuss the process of fractionalizing and weighting publications by journal impact factor in the main text.

- Please justify the inclusion of only university psychologists and discuss the potential impact of excluding researchers from other sectors (e.g., MPG institutes).

- A more detailed explanation of your methods and statistical analyses is needed. Including information on how you dealt with reciprocal causality and unknown confounders would be helpful. Ensure that all appendices (D, E, and F) are included in the document.

- Provide more detailed information on how mobility and staying abroad were measured, along with the reliability of these measurements.

- Consider distinguishing between different levels of professorship and career stages to account for heterogeneity within the professor category.

- Think about additional output indicators to capture the impact of research output.

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Reviewers' comments:

Reviewer's Responses to Questions

Comments to the Author

1. Is the manuscript technically sound, and do the data support the conclusions?

The manuscript must describe a technically sound piece of scientific research with data that supports the conclusions. Experiments must have been conducted rigorously, with appropriate controls, replication, and sample sizes. The conclusions must be drawn appropriately based on the data presented.

Reviewer #1: Partly

Reviewer #2: Yes

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2. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously?

Reviewer #1: I Don't Know

Reviewer #2: Yes

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3. Have the authors made all data underlying the findings in their manuscript fully available?

The PLOS Data policy requires authors to make all data underlying the findings described in their manuscript fully available without restriction, with rare exception (please refer to the Data Availability Statement in the manuscript PDF file). The data should be provided as part of the manuscript or its supporting information, or deposited to a public repository. For example, in addition to summary statistics, the data points behind means, medians and variance measures should be available. If there are restrictions on publicly sharing data—e.g. participant privacy or use of data from a third party—those must be specified.

Reviewer #1: No

Reviewer #2: No

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4. Is the manuscript presented in an intelligible fashion and written in standard English?

PLOS ONE does not copyedit accepted manuscripts, so the language in submitted articles must be clear, correct, and unambiguous. Any typographical or grammatical errors should be corrected at revision, so please note any specific errors here.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

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5. Review Comments to the Author

Please use the space provided to explain your answers to the questions above. You may also include additional comments for the author, including concerns about dual publication, research ethics, or publication ethics. (Please upload your review as an attachment if it exceeds 20,000 characters)

Reviewer #1: This is an interesting paper on an important issue, of interest to a large audience (although this is not a formal criterion).

The first problem is that the methods are described rather short, and that it is therefore not completely clear what was done and why. There is no code and no data to check things. A more informative explanation of the various steps in the analysis is required, with information what statistical software was used and with the code. Many things therefore remain somewhat unclear. For example, how was the reciprocal causality (performance <-> motherhood; earlier performance -> mobility (or grants) -> later performance) handled in the analysis. And the random and fixed effect analyses are used among other to control for unknown confounders - what variables not included could still have an effect on the findings, apart from of course disciplinary differences (as the study only includes psychology) and country differences.

Second, the text does refer to appendices A-F, but in the document I downloaded are no appendices D, E, or F.

Third, the information about the data is incomplete. Just as one example, how has mobility and staying abroad been measured? What data were available got that, and how reliable are these? Please describe into more detail how the variables are measured and whether that is reliable.

Some other issues:

- The authors only distinguish three career steps: predoc, postdoc and professor. The last category (and the second too), however, is very heterogeneous and includes everyone from junior/assistant professors to full professors. I would assume that distinguishing junior profs from full profs may have an effect on the outcomes. At least there should have been a convincing argument why this distinction is unimportant.

- The sample includes everyone that got a PhD in psychology since 1980, and that implies a huge variation in age, and even more importantly, in the period they started the career. I would assume that career patterns have changed over time, and that leads to the question how such contextual factors influence the findings. Or the other way around, how is controlled for contextual changes that may have influenced the career patterns?

- Is only the number of publications relevant, or should some other output indicator be preferred, e.g., the number of top cited papers? That would probably be a better indicator, as it includes also the impact of the produced output. And is the analysis sensitive for the selected dependent variable?

Typos (some):

- (p5) It is therefore reasonable to first test whether more [lacking word?] psychologists acquire more funding in the first place ...

- (p11) nale psychologist = male psychologists?

Reviewer #2: The article ‘Human capital, research funding, and gender: Determinants of research productivity in German psychology’ aims to analyze the research productivity of psychologists affiliated with German universities. It focuses on determinants of productivity, including previous success in publishing journal articles, gender, institutional environment, international mobility, and grant funding. The study is based on extensive empirical data, which included coding the CV information of all academic psychologists affiliated with relevant departments in more than 70 German universities. The results of the study confirm the cumulative advantage effect suggesting that previous productivity is the most significant predictor of future productivity. The article demonstrates a thoughtful research design, with longitudinal data providing a substantial advantage for causal inferences, and the statistical analysis has been performed appropriately and rigorously.

However, several comments may help the authors improve the article.

Firstly, the article requires more conceptual clarity. It is unclear whether the focus is on one main determinant or on multiple equivalent factors. Initially, the authors seem to consider two approaches: the sacred spark hypothesis and the cumulative advantage hypothesis. Both approaches conceptualize the prior performance effect differently (as I suppose), though this distinction is not clearly discussed in the theoretical section. While institutional environment, research funding, and gender are important factors that can affect productivity, their roles in the article seem auxiliary as they are considered rather as control variables (“In any case, important intervening variables in any relationship between earlier and later success are a researcher’s institutional environment, research funding and gender, which is why these influences need to be accounted for in any comprehensive model of research productivity”, p.4). This reconstruction is apparent on pages 3-4. However, later in the article, all factors are considered more equivalently, and the initial focus on the clash of two approaches is lost. For example, significant attention is given to gender as a variable. My recommendation is to clarify the role of these factors in the study. It might be beneficial to consider all factors together without focusing on two approaches. If the focus remains on two approaches, it is necessary to clearly define the expected empirical patterns for each approach—specifically, the relationship of the dependent variable with previous productivity or other predictors. Formulating clear hypotheses derived from the two approaches may also bring more conceptual clarity.

It is also unclear how the authors selected sources to cite when discussing the role of various determinants of research productivity given that this topic has been widely researched. Some cited sources are relevant for the American system, which differs significantly from the European context. I suggest that it is important to address the context of the national academic science system, within which the allocation of rewards and recognition of research achievements play significant roles. Authors may bring more empirical findings from similar national contexts.

Furthermore, the placement of international mobility within the institutional environment section may not be appropriate, as the mechanism of mobility may include the expansion of a network of co-authors rather than the effect of institutional place. In other words, such factor as international mobility is broader than institutional environment.

I suggest bring more attention to the discussion of the choice of the main dependent variable. It is worth to put in the main text information from the footnote devoted to the discussion of the two steps: fractionalizing and weighting a publication by journal impact factor (additionally, it seems that the indicated appendix was not placed at the end of the article). There is a consensus in the literature about the hierarchy of publication prestige—papers published in journals of different levels should be regarded as different contribution (see, for example, the discussion in Kwiek, 2023). Given that consensus, it is better to discuss weighting in the main section.

Justifying the choice of SSCI/SCIE articles in the context of selecting the publication type and the Web of Science is also essential. Given the bias towards English-language publications, it is useful to clarify how common it is for German psychologists to publish in international journals. Is it possible to make a career with virtually no such publications? It would help to understand what part of empirical phenomenon authors are studying.

Although time dynamics are accounted for by design, considering the authors' age—both biological and academic—might be worthwhile, as productivity differences may be associated with cohort and specifics of the academic market over different periods.

Although, the article indicates similar or different empirical results in various places, wthen discussing results, it would be beneficial to use a paragraph to place the results in the context of similar studies and discuss any similarities or differences. It is also would be useful to provide any suggestions for revealed differences with previous studies. In this regard, I suggest to pay attention to a recent article with similar findings: "Once highly productive, forever highly productive? Full professors’ research productivity from a longitudinal perspective" (Kwiek, 2023).

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Reviewer #1: No

Reviewer #2: Yes: Katerina Guba

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PONE-D-24-24540R1Human capital, gender, institutional environment and research funding: Determinants of research productivity in German psychologyPLOS ONE

Dear Dr. Schröder,

Thank you for submitting your manuscript to PLOS ONE. 

I have decided that your manuscript can be accepted for publication. However, I would like to ask you to clarify two questions raised by Reviewer 1 and also to add a short non-technical introduction to the three-fold Oaxaca-Blinder decomposition in the methods section. These are only minor changes and I will not send the manuscript back to the reviewers. I'll look at it myself.

Please submit your revised manuscript by Jan 25 2025 11:59PM. If you will need more time than this to complete your revisions, please reply to this message or contact the journal office at plosone@plos.org. When you're ready to submit your revision, log on to https://www.editorialmanager.com/pone/ and select the 'Submissions Needing Revision' folder to locate your manuscript file.

Please include the following items when submitting your revised manuscript:

• A rebuttal letter that responds to each point raised by the academic editor and reviewer(s). You should upload this letter as a separate file labeled 'Response to Reviewers'.
• A marked-up copy of your manuscript that highlights changes made to the original version. You should upload this as a separate file labeled 'Revised Manuscript with Track Changes'.
• An unmarked version of your revised paper without tracked changes. You should upload this as a separate file labeled 'Manuscript'.

If you would like to make changes to your financial disclosure, please include your updated statement in your cover letter. Guidelines for resubmitting your figure files are available below the reviewer comments at the end of this letter.

If applicable, we recommend that you deposit your laboratory protocols in protocols.io to enhance the reproducibility of your results. Protocols.io assigns your protocol its own identifier (DOI) so that it can be cited independently in the future. For instructions see: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/submission-guidelines#loc-laboratory-protocols. Additionally, PLOS ONE offers an option for publishing peer-reviewed Lab Protocol articles, which describe protocols hosted on protocols.io. Read more information on sharing protocols at https://plos.org/protocols?utm_medium=editorial-email&utm_source=authorletters&utm_campaign=protocols.

We look forward to receiving your revised manuscript.

Kind regards,

Andrey Lovakov, Ph.D.

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

Journal Requirements:

Please review your reference list to ensure that it is complete and correct. If you have cited papers that have been retracted, please include the rationale for doing so in the manuscript text, or remove these references and replace them with relevant current references. Any changes to the reference list should be mentioned in the rebuttal letter that accompanies your revised manuscript. If you need to cite a retracted article, indicate the article’s retracted status in the References list and also include a citation and full reference for the retraction notice.

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Reviewers' comments:

Reviewer's Responses to Questions

Comments to the Author

1. If the authors have adequately addressed your comments raised in a previous round of review and you feel that this manuscript is now acceptable for publication, you may indicate that here to bypass the “Comments to the Author” section, enter your conflict of interest statement in the “Confidential to Editor” section, and submit your "Accept" recommendation.

Reviewer #1: (No Response)

Reviewer #2: All comments have been addressed

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2. Is the manuscript technically sound, and do the data support the conclusions?

The manuscript must describe a technically sound piece of scientific research with data that supports the conclusions. Experiments must have been conducted rigorously, with appropriate controls, replication, and sample sizes. The conclusions must be drawn appropriately based on the data presented.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: (No Response)

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3. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously?

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: (No Response)

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4. Have the authors made all data underlying the findings in their manuscript fully available?

The PLOS Data policy requires authors to make all data underlying the findings described in their manuscript fully available without restriction, with rare exception (please refer to the Data Availability Statement in the manuscript PDF file). The data should be provided as part of the manuscript or its supporting information, or deposited to a public repository. For example, in addition to summary statistics, the data points behind means, medians and variance measures should be available. If there are restrictions on publicly sharing data—e.g. participant privacy or use of data from a third party—those must be specified.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: (No Response)

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5. Is the manuscript presented in an intelligible fashion and written in standard English?

PLOS ONE does not copyedit accepted manuscripts, so the language in submitted articles must be clear, correct, and unambiguous. Any typographical or grammatical errors should be corrected at revision, so please note any specific errors here.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: (No Response)

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6. Review Comments to the Author

Please use the space provided to explain your answers to the questions above. You may also include additional comments for the author, including concerns about dual publication, research ethics, or publication ethics. (Please upload your review as an attachment if it exceeds 20,000 characters)

Reviewer #1: The comments of the editor and the reviewers have been taken up by the authors, which has improved the paper. However, a few questions remain.

First of all, the text (and earlier papers of the authors) suggest that they deploy an event history analysis. If that is correct it should be said in the methods section, if not the reader would want to have more details about the statistical procedures used.

Secondly, the relation between the fixed effects and the random effects may need some additional clarification. In my understanding (but may e the authors use the FE and RE in a different way, as the terms are used differently in the literature), the difference is that RE method allows for random slopes, Whereas the FE model assumes the same slope for each of the higher order entities. If the RE model has a good fit, can one then still conclude something from the FE analysis?

Thirdly, the three-fold Oaxaca-Blinder decomposition should be introduced in the methods section, as I guess many readers may not know what this is.

I feel that these methodological clarifications are needed, but I think this are only minor revisions for the authors

Reviewer #2: (No Response)

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Reviewer #1: No

Reviewer #2: Yes: Katerina Guba

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PONE-D-24-24540R2Human capital, gender, institutional environment and research funding: Determinants of research productivity in German psychologyPLOS ONE

Dear Dr. Schröder, Thank you for submitting your manuscript to PLOS ONE. After careful consideration, we feel that it has merit but does not fully meet PLOS ONE’s publication criteria as it currently stands. Therefore, we invite you to submit a revised version of the manuscript that addresses the points raised during the review process.

Thank you for resubmitting your manuscript. I am ready to accept your paper. In the cover letter you mentioned that you could send the paper to a professional editor. I am not a native English speaker myself, so I always think that a professional copy editing is a good thing. If you have the resources for it, I would definitely recommend it. I've decided to do a minor revision decision again to give you the chance to go through a professional copy editing. However, no changes (other than copy editing) are required in the text. Once you resubmit the paper, I'll accept it immediately.

Please submit your revised manuscript by Feb 02 2025 11:59PM. If you will need more time than this to complete your revisions, please reply to this message or contact the journal office at plosone@plos.org. When you're ready to submit your revision, log on to https://www.editorialmanager.com/pone/ and select the 'Submissions Needing Revision' folder to locate your manuscript file.

Please include the following items when submitting your revised manuscript:

• A rebuttal letter that responds to each point raised by the academic editor and reviewer(s). You should upload this letter as a separate file labeled 'Response to Reviewers'.
• A marked-up copy of your manuscript that highlights changes made to the original version. You should upload this as a separate file labeled 'Revised Manuscript with Track Changes'.
• An unmarked version of your revised paper without tracked changes. You should upload this as a separate file labeled 'Manuscript'.

If you would like to make changes to your financial disclosure, please include your updated statement in your cover letter. Guidelines for resubmitting your figure files are available below the reviewer comments at the end of this letter.

If applicable, we recommend that you deposit your laboratory protocols in protocols.io to enhance the reproducibility of your results. Protocols.io assigns your protocol its own identifier (DOI) so that it can be cited independently in the future. For instructions see: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/submission-guidelines#loc-laboratory-protocols. Additionally, PLOS ONE offers an option for publishing peer-reviewed Lab Protocol articles, which describe protocols hosted on protocols.io. Read more information on sharing protocols at https://plos.org/protocols?utm_medium=editorial-email&utm_source=authorletters&utm_campaign=protocols.

We look forward to receiving your revised manuscript.

Kind regards,

Andrey Lovakov, Ph.D.

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

Journal Requirements:

Please review your reference list to ensure that it is complete and correct. If you have cited papers that have been retracted, please include the rationale for doing so in the manuscript text, or remove these references and replace them with relevant current references. Any changes to the reference list should be mentioned in the rebuttal letter that accompanies your revised manuscript. If you need to cite a retracted article, indicate the article’s retracted status in the References list and also include a citation and full reference for the retraction notice.

[Note: HTML markup is below. Please do not edit.]

[NOTE: If reviewer comments were submitted as an attachment file, they will be attached to this email and accessible via the submission site. Please log into your account, locate the manuscript record, and check for the action link "View Attachments". If this link does not appear, there are no attachment files.]

While revising your submission, please upload your figure files to the Preflight Analysis and Conversion Engine (PACE) digital diagnostic tool, https://pacev2.apexcovantage.com/. PACE helps ensure that figures meet PLOS requirements. To use PACE, you must first register as a user. Registration is free. Then, login and navigate to the UPLOAD tab, where you will find detailed instructions on how to use the tool. If you encounter any issues or have any questions when using PACE, please email PLOS at figures@plos.org. Please note that Supporting Information files do not need this step.

Human capital, gender, institutional environment and research funding: Determinants of research productivity in German psychology

PONE-D-24-24540R3

Dear Dr. Schröder,

We’re pleased to inform you that your manuscript has been judged scientifically suitable for publication and will be formally accepted for publication once it meets all outstanding technical requirements.

Within one week, you’ll receive an e-mail detailing the required amendments. When these have been addressed, you’ll receive a formal acceptance letter and your manuscript will be scheduled for publication.

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If your institution or institutions have a press office, please notify them about your upcoming paper to help maximize its impact. If they’ll be preparing press materials, please inform our press team as soon as possible -- no later than 48 hours after receiving the formal acceptance. Your manuscript will remain under strict press embargo until 2 pm Eastern Time on the date of publication. For more information, please contact onepress@plos.org.

Kind regards,

Andrey Lovakov, Ph.D.

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

Additional Editor Comments (optional):

Reviewers' comments: