Content and impact of articles published by school psychology faculty

Abstract

School Psychology faculty members are expected to publish articles in peer‐reviewed journals that impact the fields of education and psychology. Both the content and the impact of the articles school psychologists publish may change across time and differ from other disciplines. The current analysis sought to understand average article impact, content, and research focus, and to describe those articles that have the highest impact factor. All of the articles (n = 3670) published by school psychology faculty between January, 2010 and December, 2015 were collected and examined. Three reviewers were trained over 2 hr to read abstracts and to classify the content of those abstracts. The literature was systematically classified into four categories: assessment, consultation, intervention, and professional issues. The title, keywords, and abstract were used to find the category of best fit for each publication. The majority of articles published fall into the broad category of Professional Issues. The average article is cited 17.68 times in Google Scholar and 4.9 times in Web of Science. These data will be useful to understand publication content trends and identify gaps in research.

Academic journals can and should contribute to the future of school psychology.

“…One area is topic selection and how they can be used to frame discussions. We inferred from the high ratio reported by Hulac et al (2019) that readers view academic journals as an important resource for professional issues in school psychology. Yet an alternative explana-This document is copyrighted by the American Psychological Association or one of its allied publishers.…”

“…In terms of time and resources, conducting a survey study or writing a position paper on professional issues is comparatively easier than conducting a randomized control trial to test a promising systems-level intervention or developing the next generation of system-wide consultation models to address the demographic changes in many of our schools. Yet the ratio reported by Hulac et al (2019) limits our understanding of research, practice, and policy implications as applied to school psychology assessment, intervention, and consultation services, all of which are needed to maintain relevance in the 21st century. Nonetheless, correcting this ratio is inconsequential if, as CP&G cogently noted, the disconnect that has long existed between school psychology researchers, practitioners, and trainers continues.…”

“…This does not appear to be the case; since 1995 professional issues (including those specific to roles and functions) comprise 50–66% of the topics published in school psychology journal—a publication rate greater than 3 times higher than the next topic (see Carper & Williams, 2004; Hulac et al, 2019; Kranzler et al, 2011). Furthermore, these papers average the highest number of citations (Hulac et al, 2019). Granted, “professional issues” is a very broad and ambiguous topic and not every paper is relevant to school psychology roles and functions, but the data suggests that readers are using journals to inform their perspective of the field today, particularly as it relates to the type of roles that could and should be performed by school psychologists.…”

“…With so many choices and comparatively fewer readers than journals catering to other disciplines (as determined by number of downloaded articles and print/electronic subscriptions across the applied disciplines), one would assume that papers on professional roles and issues would be of lower interest than topics on proximal day-to-day functions (e.g., assessment, consultation, etc.). This does not appear to be the case; since 1995 professional issues (including those specific to roles and functions) comprise 50–66% of the topics published in school psychology journal—a publication rate greater than 3 times higher than the next topic (see Carper & Williams, 2004; Hulac et al, 2019; Kranzler et al, 2011). Furthermore, these papers average the highest number of citations (Hulac et al, 2019).…”

“…One area is topic selection and how they can be used to frame discussions. We inferred from the high ratio reported by Hulac et al (2019) that readers view academic journals as an important resource for professional issues in school psychology. Yet an alternative explanation is that our journals are running the risk of topic creep (i.e., allowing one topic to eventually dominate what is published in that journal), which is of concern for an applied field.…”