Papers per person per year

The subject of prolificacy came up in lab the other day. A study from the 80s (pdf) plotted the number of papers from a lab versus the number of people in the lab. This was repeated for several large research institutions. Across all of the data, the average was 1 paper/person/lab.

A graph from that paper is shown above. They included brief reports and unrefereed contributions to books, but did not include abstracts. Note that the spread is quite large. Among the labs with 20-30 people, output ranges from 10 to 60+ papers/year. Similarly, for labs with 10 or fewer people, output ranges from 0 to 28 papers/year. Perhaps part of the variability can be accounted for by variations from one discipline to another. Laboratories in the National Cancer Institute can include biochemistry, physiology, and cell biology.

How about # of publications vs. lab funding?
According to analysis by Jeremy Berg of NIGMS, it basically plateaus, or there is no relationship, depending on how you measure. (link, follow up)

Or death rate versus NIH funding?
Given a 10 year lag, actually pretty correlated. (source)

(hat tip to AM)