Does Specialization Pay Off? Analyzing the Link Between Research Focus and Academic Career Success

Sociological research on careers and organizations suggests that those with a wide range of skills (generalists) are disadvantaged due to the dispersion of their competencies, whereas those with a focused expertise in a specific area (specialists) benefit from a deeper understanding of their domain. This study tests the applicability of these findings to academia, assessing whether scholars with a specialized publication output are more likely to obtain tenure than those with a more generalist output. Using a combination of computational quantitative text analysis of 5497 journal abstracts published along with longitudinal career data covering CV and publication data of sociology professors in German academia, first, we find that a generalist research focus has a positive and statistically significant effect on attaining tenure. In addition, male sociologists derive greater benefits from a generalist publication strategy, whereas female sociologists experience greater advantages from specialization. Second, we disentangle the overall effect into ‘qualitative’ and ‘quantitative’ specialization. Our results show a slight but non-significant advantage for sociologists who focus primarily on publishing quantitative research. Furthermore, results reveal that women in particular profit from a quantitative specialization in sociology.