Wine, Cheese and Stultification - Room for Debate - NYTimes.com

Once one passes the Agrégation -- a civil-service exam given to those wishing to become a full professor -- there is little incentive to publish. As a result, French academics publish less than their peers in other countries. France ranks sixth worldwide (after England, Japan, Germany and the United States) with 4.3 percent of publications in 2007, a decline from 5.4 percent in 1995. More important, if one looks at the share of citations in international journals from 2000-2009, France ranks 13th. -- Veronique de Rugy is a senior research fellow at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University. is a senior research fellow at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University.

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