Honorific awards and fellowships carry substantial cultural value within academe’s scholarly reward system, and they confer esteem to the scholars who win them (and the universities employing those scholars). Winning awards can alter a researcher’s career trajectory, and the processes of nominating colleagues and serving on a learned society’s committee to evaluate nominations are important contributions to the culture of one’s field.

Academic Analytics Research Center (AARC) scholars recently studied 14,139 winners of academic honorific awards ranging in scope from Nobel Prizes to scholarly societies’ “Outstanding Young Researcher” awards, exploring research questions including:

1. Are some awards more likely to be won by scholars at different career stages (i.e., is it possible to differentiate between leading and trailing indicator awards)?

2. Do trailing indicator awards reflect greater publishing activity and research funding in the preceding years?

3. Do leading indicator awards predict greater publishing activity and research funding in the following years?

4. Is there a gender gap among honorific award winners?

Speakers:
George Walker, Senior Academic Advisor, Academic Analytics
Anthony Olejniczak, Director, Academic Analytics Research Center
Mike Rohlinger, CIO, COO, Academic Analytics