  The paper provides an empirical examination of how research productivity
distributions differ across scientific fields and disciplines. Productivity is
measured using the FSS indicator, which embeds both quantity and impact of
output. The population studied consists of over 31,000 scientists in 180 fields
(10 aggregate disciplines) of a national research system. The Characteristic
Scores and Scale technique is used to investigate the distribution patterns for
the different fields and disciplines. Research productivity distributions are
found to be asymmetrical at the field level, although the degree of skewness
varies substantially among the fields within the aggregate disciplines. We also
examine whether the field productivity distributions show a fractal nature,
which reveals an exception more than a rule. Differently, for the disciplines,
the partitions of the distributions show skewed patterns that are highly
similar.
