A response to Erickson, Fleuriet, and Hosman's “prolific publishing: Professional and administrative concerns”

An analysis of book versus article productivity based on top researchers careers

“…Scholars within the field often disagree about both quantitative and qualitative evaluations of research productivity. Hickson, Stacks,and Amsbary (1989,1992,1993 conducted studies on individual faculty productivity of journal articles and sparked a rash of criticism (Blair, Brown, & Baxter, 1994;Erickson, Fleuriet, & Houseman, 1993 and counter-arguments (Hickson, 1996) about the techniques employed. Still, research productivity remains the most important academic issue since it is often the only one used by outsiders to assess academic departments (Gillespie, 1992).…”