Ranking of Agricultural Economics Departments: Influence of Regional Journals, Joint Authorship, and Self‐Citations

Abstract

Citations are increasingly used to indicate the quality of an academic unit's work. The set of literature or journals, however, becomes crucial to any ranking scheme. Citations from the broadly based Social Science Citations Index suggest a different ranking of departments than the ranking obtained from a somewhat narrowly focused set of North American journals of agricultural economics. The paper seeks to determine the influence of regional journals, joint authorship, and self‐citations on departmental rankings. Data bases of citations are developed for the faculty of seventy‐three departments of agricultural economics in the United States and Canada.

On the Relationship between the Student‐Advisor Match and Early Career Research Productivity for Agricultural and Resource Economics Ph.D.s

“…6 Accordingly, we consider three separate categories of articles: (1) 5 Perry chooses these four journals because according to the Social Science Citation Index (SSCI) they are the only journals to have citation rates close to or higher than the citation rate for the AJAE. 6 In their study, Beilock and Polopolus (1988) articles, (2) articles published in one of the four "core" agricultural and resource economics journals, and (3) articles published in one of the "regional" agricultural and resource economics journals. Finally, as is standard in the literature (Moore, Newman, and Turnbull 1998), we exclude replies, comments, and other errata from our publication counts, as we only want to account for original research.…”

Ranking of Doctoral Programs of Health Education: Methodological Revisions and Results

“…Ranking of institutions and degree programs in higher education is commonplace, and rankings exist for a number of disciplines or fields of academic study (Beilock & Polopolus, 1988;Medoff, 1996;Notaro, O'Rourke, & Eddy, 2000;Richards & Taylor, 1995;Tauer & Tauer, 1984;Watson, Edwards, & Barker, 1989;West & Rhee, 1995). The abundance of ranking studies in the literature from various fields of study as well as the growing popularity of newsstand publications ranking universities validates the demand and importance for ranking studies of academic institutions and programs.…”

A Curriculum Content Analysis of Master's Degree Programs in Agricultural Economics: A Study of Selected Canadian and U.S. Schools

“…The selected general objectives are: to grasp and apply the basic fundamental concepts in economic theory; to enable students to acquire knowledge and later apply statistics, structural econometrics, operations research and quantitative models to make inferences and estimations (Zellner 1985); to enable students to formulate statements of economic, political, social and agricultural intentions; and to make students conscious of the limits of neoclassical analysis by exposing them to alternative theories such as Marxian economics (Petit 1981). Students should have an opportunity of synthesizing the programs' content knowledge, the objectives of the synthesis cantent area being: to translate theory into practice (Glazer 1986); to develop new agricultural economics knowledge; to enhance cooperative ventures with government agencies, farmers and business (Johnson 1983); and to enhance social and economic welfare (Beilock and Polopolus 1988). Students should be able to take enrichment courses in specific deficient content knowledge and skill, the objectives being: to allow students to broaden their agricultural economics curriculum; and to provide students with needed extra skills or to make up for deficiencies in some content knowledge (Glazer 1986).…”

“…Beilock and Polopolus (1988) underscore the difficulty in evaluating agricultural economics programs, including the sticky problem of attribution, since the evaluations must be done in an environment where there are many change agents and social economic factors affecting the outcome. Beilock and Polopolus (1988) underscore the difficulty in evaluating agricultural economics programs, including the sticky problem of attribution, since the evaluations must be done in an environment where there are many change agents and social economic factors affecting the outcome.…”