Prolific Authors In The Journal Of Agricultural Education: A Reivew Of The Eighties

Abstract

A total of 309 articles published in 10 volumes of the Journal of Agricultural Education (JAE) were examined to determine prolific authors in the JAE for the decade of the eighties. Prolific authors for this study were defined as those authors who had published five or more articles in the ten volumes of the JAE. Based on this definition, 21 authors were identified as most prolific. These 21 prolific authors were interviewed via telephone to obtain background information, and also determine what factors influenced them to become prolific. In addition, how authors respond to replication requests was also examined. These 21 authors published 151 articles accounting for 49% of the total number of articles published in the JAE. Most authors have Ph.D. degrees and were employed in universities as full professors. Authors identified teacher education, adult education, vocational education, program planing and evaluation, curriculum development, communications and international agriculture as their main areas of expertise. Prolific authors were most likely to be first or second authors. Personal drive, colleagues, graduate school training and advisors during graduate training were factors which influenced them to become prolific. Almost all prolific authors responded positively to share details of their studies for replication.

Coauthor Network Analysis of Journal of Agricultural Education Articles from 2008-2017

“…On the other hand, out of 593 authors, 25 authors had at least 12 publications and 10 had at least 20 publications. While there is a larger number of prolific authors in this study than there were in the 1980s (Radhakrishna & Jackson, 1995), much of JAE's content is still being produced by a relatively small portion of its author population. The potential reasons a majority of authors only published once include graduate students publishing from a thesis or external committee members on theses who are not in the agricultural education, but it is not possible to understand why so many authors are not more engaged in JAE without further exploration.…”

“…Past work has assessed author productivity in JAE. Radhakrishna and Jackson (1995) assessed the most prolific authors of the 1980s. During that time period, there were 309 articles published overall, with almost half the articles featuring one of the most prolific authors.…”

“…Past research has addressed research productivity in JAE and agricultural education, but the past work did not directly assess collaboration. Radhakrishna and Jackson (1995) excluded coauthorship between prolific authors in their analysis, only giving credit to whoever was listed first, even though the majority of articles in the timeframe were coauthored.…”

Citation Structure: An Analysis of the Literature Cited in the Journal of Applied Communications from 1997 - 2006

“…The conceptual framework of the study was grounded in work by numerous scholars in agricultural education and agricultural communications. Several researchers have completed various components of journal analyses in agricultural education: Familiarity and quality of journals and importance of faculty publishing (Radhakrishna, 1995;Radhakrishna & Jackson, 1993); research theme areas (Buriak & Shinn, 1993;Dyer et al, 2003;Edgar et al, 2008;Miller et al, 2006;Moore, 1991;Radhakrishna & Xu, 1997;Silva-Guerrero & Sutphin, 1990); prolific authors (Harder & Roberts, 2006;Radhakrishna & Jackson, 1995;Radhakrishna, Jackson, & Eaton, 1992); statistical methods used (Bowen, Rollins, Baggett, & Miller, 1990;Dyer et al, 2003;Mannenbach, McKenna, & Pfau., 1984), and cited literature (Moore, 1991;Radhakrishna et al, 1994;Radhakrishna, 1995;Miller et al, 2006). Conceptually this study focused on cited literature.…”

Journal of Applied Communications vol. 95(2) Full Issue

“…The conceptual framework of the study was grounded in work by numerous scholars in agricultural education and agricultural communications. Several researchers have completed various components of journal analyses in agricultural education: Familiarity and quality of journals and importance of faculty publishing (Radhakrishna, 1995;Radhakrishna & Jackson, 1993); research theme areas (Buriak & Shinn, 1993;Dyer et al, 2003;Edgar et al, 2008;Miller et al, 2006;Moore, 1991;Radhakrishna & Xu, 1997;Silva-Guerrero & Sutphin, 1990); prolific authors (Harder & Roberts, 2006;Radhakrishna & Jackson, 1995;Radhakrishna, Jackson, & Eaton, 1992); statistical methods used (Bowen, Rollins, Baggett, & Miller, 1990;Dyer et al, 2003;Mannenbach, McKenna, & Pfau., 1984), and cited literature (Moore, 1991;Radhakrishna et al, 1994;Radhakrishna, 1995;Miller et al, 2006). Conceptually this study focused on cited literature.…”