The 10/50 rule. An analysis of research output of 150,000 Polish scientists shows permanent systemic inequalities in science

Abstract

We conducted an analysis of the contribution of the most productive Polish scientists to national publication output from a temporal (1992−2021) and disciplinary (15 STEMM disciplines) perspectives. The top 1% of scientists accounted on average for 10% of national publication output (the 1/10 rule), and the top 10% of scientists accounted for almost 50% of this output (the 10/50 rule). The results of our econometric models show that the odds of membership in the top performers classes are significantly higher for men, scientists with a long publication history, and extensively involved in international research collaboration. Men are overrepresented in all three classes of most productive scientists (1%, 5%, and 10%) examined. The dataset included N = 152043 Polish scientists and their Nart= 587558 research articles from 1992−2021 indexed in Scopus.