Reference on abuse of stimulant medications among professors to enhance academic performance?
There were several prominent publications in Nature, spurred by a survey that they conducted of their readers who were able to broadly identify their area of work. See this link here for information about the survey, which also cites the papers that were published in Nature. http://network.nature.com/groups/naturenewsandopinion/forum/topics/1309
In researching this topic, I used google scholar and the search terms "stress stimulants faculty -students" and published 2008 or later to arrive at meaningful search results.
The most likely reason there is more work published on student use is that students as a demographic group are both easier to study and are a more similar group of cohorts than faculty as a demographic group, which are more diverse in age, race, ethnicity, etc.
This is a more detailed answer explaining the results of the survey given by Sydney E. Everhart's answer.
The results of the informal 2008 Nature survey1 found that
One in five respondents said they had used drugs for non-medical reasons to stimulate their focus, concentration or memory.
More specifically, a comment attributed to the author of this article clarifies:
For the record, our poll didn’t parse out academics, or practicing scientists very thoroughly and the overall results can’t really be tied to scientists exactly. But our demographics do allow us to make some assumptions. We asked what category generally describes your field and included among the limited choices, Biology, Chemistry, Earth & Environmental Science, Engineering, Medicine, Physics, and Education. So if we assume those are ‘academic’ fields and academic respondents, we have 817 respondents out of a total 1,400 that fit that loose demographic. Of those we found that 106 (13%) used neuroenhancing-type drugs for medically prescribed reasons. And 159 (19%) used drugs for non-medical (i.e. cognition-enhancing) purposes. That’s pretty consistent with the overall distribution in the poll.
Unfortunately, the data from that survey - which was previously freely available for download - seems to no longer be online.
1 Maher, Brendan. "Poll results: look who's doping." Nature 452 (2008): 674-675. DOI: 10.1038/452674a