The diffusion of IT in higher education: publishing productivity of academic life scientists

This study investigates how the diffusion of Internet access and other advancements in IT across a broad group of institutions of higher education has affected the publishing productivity of life scientists. Several IT indicators are considered: (1) the adoption of BITNET; (2) the registration of domain names (DNS); (3) the availability of the electronic journal database, JSTOR (http://www.jstor.org/), and (4) the availability of electronic library resources. Data on life scientists are from the 1983, 1995, 2001 and 2003 Survey of Doctorate Recipients (SDR). Educational institutions are classified into tiers depending upon research intensity. Three hypotheses are tested: (1) IT enhances the careers of faculty; (2) IT improves the careers of faculty at lower-tiered relative to higher-tiered institutions; and (3) IT increases women's publication rates relative to those of men. The results provide some support for the first two hypotheses but no support for the third hypothesis.