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This article analyses which factors seem to influence the research production of economics academics in Portuguese universities. The availability of the empirical data from the one-off national Portuguese census on degrees’ accreditation collected via the curricular files that all university academics had to submit to the national accreditation body (comprising an extensive list of detailed information regarding each academic in every public university) allowed for the opportunity of the study. The methodological procedures involve the analysis of the relationships between variables, an additive ordinal logistic model, a hierarchical cluster analysis and optimal scaling techniques. The results provide detailed information on the factors that influence research output production by academics and the relationship to factors shaping the academic career. This work has, at least, two main advantages: to describe the research performance of the academics by the time the new career statutes replaced the previous ones within a context of enhancing quality and productivity; and to be part of a scholarly reference that can be used (in a comparative perspective) for future studies.