  Predicting the scientific productivity of researchers is a basic task for
academic administrators and funding agencies. This study provided a model for
the publication dynamics of researchers, inspired by the distribution feature
of researchers' publications in quantity. It is a piecewise Poisson model,
analyzing and predicting the publication productivity of researchers by
regression. The principle of the model is built on the explanation for the
distribution feature as a result of an inhomogeneous Poisson process that can
be approximated as a piecewise Poisson process. The model's principle was
validated by the high quality dblp dataset, and its effectiveness was testified
in predicting the publication productivity for majority of researchers and the
evolutionary trend of their publication productivity. Tests to confirm or
disconfirm the model are also proposed. The model has the advantage of
providing results in an unbiased way; thus is useful for funding agencies that
evaluate a vast number of applications with a quantitative index on
publications.
