Q. How can I find national benchmarks for faculty research productivity in different disciplines?

Here are three good sources for national statistics on faculty scholarly productivity:

1. The Chronicle of Higher Education offers access to a proprietary ranking tool called the Faculty Scholarly Productivity Index: http://chronicle.com/stats/productivity/. There's an overview of the methodology here: http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2006/01/25/analytics
2. The National Research Council has also produced a comprehensive ranking of research doctorate programs that includes data on faculty members' research output: http://www.nap.edu/rdp/. Unfortunately, many "applied" fields have not been included in the rankings, which limits their usefulness. The Chronicle of Higher Education has more information here: http://chronicle.com/page/NRC-Rankings/321/
3. The National Center for Education Statistics' Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS) also has data on faculty research output, though only by broad disciplinary category. See table 23 here: http://nces.ed.gov/das/library/tables_listings/2006176.asp. 
   Note: several of the other tables (especially 19 and 21) contain useful benchmarking data for other areas as well, such as teaching load and student contact hours. For more of this data, see:  http://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d10/tables/dt10_261.asp

In addition, here are some scholarly articles and reports on college faculty members' scholarly productivity:

• http://0-search.ebscohost.com.patris.apu.edu/login.aspx?direct=true&db=eric&bquery=(DE+%22Faculty+Publishing%22)+AND+(DE+Productivity)+AND+(%22higher+education%22)&type=1&site=ehost-live
• http://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&q=%22higher+education%22+%22faculty+publishing%22+productivity+norms+standards&btnG=Search&as_sdt=0%2C5&as_ylo=&as_vis=0
• Assessing faculty publication productivity: issues of equity / by Elizabeth G. Creamer ; prepared by ERIC Clearinghouse on Higher Education, the George Washington University, in cooperation with ASHE, Association for the Study of Higher Education  (available through LINK+): http://apu-csul.apu.edu:2083/record=b12982481~S0
• Measuring faculty research performance / John W. Creswell, editor (available through LINK+): http://apu-csul.apu.edu:2083/record=b10296236~S0