Publication Output of Swiss Political Science Departments∗

This paper compares the scientific publication output and international academic visi-bility of Swiss political science departments, using three indicators (number of publications, number of citations, and the h-index) and publicly available data from two sources: the ISI Web of Knowledge and Google Scholar. We also examine whether the publication output of political science professors and postdoctoral researchers in Switzerland varies as a function of academic age. We observe rather strong variation both across and within departments. The analysis also shows that the most prolific professors tend to be those who completed their Ph.D. about 15–20 years ago, and that some postdocs are on a very promising publi-cations trajectory. We derive some benchmarks for publication output that may be useful for hiring decisions or promotions.