J. Clean. Prod. 226, 959–967 (2019).

Air travel is one of the fastest-growing contributors to greenhouse gas emissions. In academia, travel may be required to coordinate research across international teams and conduct fieldwork, and conferences and department visits may provide important opportunities for maintaining visibility, promoting new research and developing collaborations. However, whether air travel is actually related to professional success in academia has not been tested.

Seth Wynes and coauthors, from the University of British Columbia, Canada, analysed data from travel requisition forms provided by 26 academic departments at the University of British Columbia over an 18-month period, as well as publicly available academic profiles. Conferences were the primary purpose for most trips. More senior academics and those with higher salaries were responsible for more air travel emissions. However, there was no association between emissions and productivity, as measured by total citations and h-index (adjusted for academic age and discipline). Nor was air travel related to collaborations with other academics, as measured by average number of authors per paper. These results suggest that there is potential for academics to reduce emissions from air travel without compromising their careers.