WHAT FRACTION OF ASTRONOMERS BECOME RELATIVELY INACTIVE IN RESEARCH AFTER RECEIVING TENURE

We ask how many astronomers publish substantially fewer papers after r eceiving tenure than before and what are their characteristics that wo uld have allowed us to predict their decreased productivity? This is a nswered by a study of 214 tenured astronomers at 17 of the major astro nomical centers in the U.S. It is reassuring that 48% of the astronome rs published more papers per year after receiving tenure than before a nd 33% published between half and the same number of papers per year a s before tenure. Only 19% published less than half as many papers per year after tenure than before; among those, 1.8% published no first-au thor papers after receiving tenure, even though that occurred several decades ago in some cases. However the pre-tenure rates of publication and the current citations to those papers were not significantly diff erent for the 19% less active researchers than for the remaining 81%. We found no numerical characteristics that allow one to predict who wi ll become relatively inactive in research after receiving tenure. Thos e 19% do not favor any specific decade when they received tenure (1960 s, 1970s, or 1980s) and they are well distributed among the 17 institu tions. A few have heavy administrative responsibilities, but some othe rs with at least as heavy responsibilities are among the most producti ve researchers after tenure. The 17 institutions averaged a constant n umber of new tenure assignments per year during 1970-1995.