For decades, the effect of academic tenure on faculty research has been a subject of debate, often based more on anecdote than evidence. Does the job security of tenure lead to a decline in productivity, or does it give researchers the freedom to pursue more innovative work?
A major new study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) provides some of the clearest answers to date. An international team of researchers analyzed the careers of more than 12,000 U.S. faculty members across 15 different disciplines to see how their research output changed before and after earning tenure. The findings, detailed in the paper "Tenure and research trajectories," reveal a distinct turning point in academic careers, marked by a trade-off between producing "hit" papers and exploring novel ideas.
View the article here: Tenure and research trajectories
G. Tripodi, X. Zheng, Y. Qian, D. Murray, B.F. Jones, C. Ni, & D. Wang, Tenure and research trajectories, Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. 122 (30) e2500322122, https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2500322122 (2025).
Productivity Changes Depend on the Field
The study confirms a widely-held belief: on the road to tenure, faculty are increasingly productive. The data shows a sharp and steady increase in the number of publications per year, which peaks right before the tenure decision is made. As an “up-or-out contract design,” tenure encourages peak performance while faculty are on the tenure track.
What happens next, however, depends heavily on the researcher's field. The authors identified two main post-tenure paths:
Lab-Based Fields: In disciplines like biology, chemistry, and medicine, where research is often conducted in large, grant-funded labs, publication rates tend to remain high and stable after tenure. The study suggests that the collaborative structure and funding mechanisms in these fields create an environment that encourages and sustains high levels of output.
Non-Lab-Based Fields: In contrast, fields that rely more on individual scholarship, such as mathematics, sociology, and economics, typically see a significant decline in publication rates after tenure is secured.
The study also found that very few faculty stop publishing altogether. In fact, across all disciplines, a substantial portion of faculty significantly increase their publication rate after tenure, with many even doubling their output.
The Shift from High-Impact to High-Novelty
Perhaps the most significant finding is not about the quantity of research, but its quality and nature. The study reveals a shift away from producing high-impact work toward more exploratory science after tenure.
Before tenure, faculty are more likely to produce "hit papers" - defined as work that ends up in the top 5% of citations for its field and year. After tenure, the rate of producing these highly-cited papers drops.
At the same time, faculty are more likely to pursue new research topics after tenure, combining ideas in atypical ways that are new to their field. These new research agendas tend to be more novel than the work they pursued prior to tenure, suggesting that faculty use the security of tenure to take bigger risks on less-certain ideas—the kind of work that can lead to breakthroughs, but also carries a higher chance of failure. In other words, tenure provides the support for faculty to exploit their established research agendas and, at the same time, explore new directions in research.
A Large-Scale Look Made Possible by New Data
Previous studies on this topic were often limited to a single discipline or a small group of faculty. This research was able to achieve its scale by integrating seven different datasets10. A key element was faculty data licensed from the
Academic Analytics Research Center (AARC) provided the data the researchers used to precisely identify when each of the 12,611 scholars in the main sample was promoted. By linking this information to publication databases, the team could create a detailed timeline of research activity surrounding the tenure event.
The authors conclude that these research activity patterns are tied directly to tenure itself, and are not just a function of faculty career age. By comparing tenure-track faculty to other researchers in non-tenure based settings, they show that the sharp break in research trajectories is unique to the tenure system. The findings provide a data-driven foundation for institutions to better understand the incentives that shape a scholar's career and the vital role tenure can play in fostering scientific exploration.
