Point taken. However, much like the distribution of good researchers, there is not a one-to-one correspondence between good papers and good journals!

In their study, the exception seemed to be researchers of middle academic origin that moved up the ladder. They were significantly more productive and had the highest mean citation counts. This is not surprising is it?

They published more articles in top journals than researchers from more prestigious schools who were also hired in the same positions.

In effect, based on this study alone, there is no justification for a hiring committee who favors graduates from less schools.

Producing fewer high impact research papers should be more important than turning out many mediocre papers (but that might not always be recognized at tenure time).

In this survey, they specifically picked “quality journals”. So they did not count “mediocre papers”.

In their study, the exception seemed to be researchers of middle academic origin that moved up the ladder. They were significantly more productive and had the highest mean citation counts. This is not surprising is it?

Producing fewer high impact research papers should be more important than turning out many mediocre papers (but that might not always be recognized at tenure time). Measuring impact is a different problem entirely, but simply counting publications and averaging citation counts across them does not seem to be sufficient.

Well, this is actually exactly what we are trying to teach our own graduates (NYU is one of the “high prestige” IS departments in the study).

I actually consider this a good thing: “Write less but get more people to read what you write.”