The Character of Published Scholarship by Top Ranked African American Faculty in U.S. Social Work Programs

Abstract

Despite the low numbers of Black/African American scholars serving as full professors in U.S. colleges and universities, the techniques they used to circumvent systematic and structural academic barriers provide helpful tips that younger Black/African American scholars could employ when writing and publishing their research findings. However, additional research is needed to further unearth differences, and/or expectations, based on numerous variables, which includes but not limited to: (a) academic rank, (b) funded research,

Citation Impact Factors Among Faculty in Canadian Social Work Programs

“…Similarly, the inflated values of the g-index also help to give credit to lowly cited or noncited papers (Egghe, 2006). Consistent with the literature in this citational impact area, we contend like others, that the h-index should not be solely used to determine more complete pictures of research and scholarship impact (Allen, 2017).…”

“…what are the studies about?-were presented in Table 3. Allen's (2017) work was the first empirical investigation combining bibliometrics and social work citational impact scores with additional contentrelated issues. Content-wise, 35% of the top-ranked Canadian citations in Table 3 focused their subject matters on children, youth, and/or adolescents in their titles.…”

“…Also, 88% were in well-regarded peer-reviewed journals, and 11% were reports/textbooks/gray literature studies. The content flavor of Table 3 reflected both within the titles and also with a frequency counts of journals, a decidedly collective and more medically oriented group of studies, emanating from Canadian authors, rather than those noted in the U.S. social work African American content study by Allen (2017).…”

African American Social Work Faculty

“…The research team wondered how given their impressive, productive, and impactful scholarship of the overall faculty in this study, how only one of their articles, coauthored by three of the scholars interviewed, was included in the list of the 100 most highly cited articles in nine social work journals from 2000 to 2009 (Hodge, Lacasse, & Benson, 2012). However, this delimited display of African American scholarship could be attributed to the extent these scholars published in other social work and/or nonsocial work journals (J. L. Allen, 2017). Nevertheless, the strategies laid out by the scholars in this study have bode well for these interviewees, thereby serving as a model of activities for readers ranging from both African American and non-African American doctoral students to senior faculty looking to further expand their scholarship.…”

How Are African Americans Currently Represented in Various Social Work Venues?

“…To both survive and thrive in the current "publish or perish" culture, these scholars expressed strategically targeting higher impact nonsocial work journals to bolster their scholarly productivity in pursuit of promotion and tenure (Allen et al, 2018). In fact, Allen (2017) found that over 60% of their most impactful publications were published in high-impact nonsocial work journals, including those primarily addressing topics germane to African American experiences in the United States (i.e., race, racism, inequality, etc. ).…”