Scientific career tracks and publication performance - relationships discovered in the Hungarian academic promotion system

The paper aims to investigate the research patterns of Hungarian university full professors and career pathways in various disciplines. Hungary has a so-called ‘multi-stage’ formalized hierarchy that clearly defines the steps leading to achieve the appointment of full professor. Following the theoretical chapter in which different career scenarios – such as ‘Top Researcher’, ‘Outstanding Lecturer’ and ‘Local Manager’ are presented, an empirical analysis is carried out. The sample consists of a group of 327 professors. Our results point out that there are different research patterns and a significant gap can be observed between disciplines rather preferring international publication (scored by SJR) and the ones opting for publishing monographs. As far as career paths concerned, it was found that the number of years until reaching the PhD degree ranges between 6-13 years, 15.5–22 years are needed on average to achieve habilitation, while the time needed for getting the title of full professor ranges between 22-27 years. It is clearly perceivable that the gap in the number of years converges until reaching full professorship in each and every discipline.