The status of research productivity in communication: 1915–1995

Predicting faculty job centrality in communication

“…It should be noted, all analyses were undertaken at the program-specific level, not at the institutional level, as many institutions host multiple doctoral programs (e.g., University of Texas-Austin, Michigan State University, Indiana University). Previous attempts ranked publishing at the institution-level and used only publication frequency among scholars in the Top 100 list (Hickson, Stacks, & Bodon 1999) as well as a restricted number of journals (e.g., 24 in Hickson et al 1999). Two measures were used to assess publication rates at the program level, the mean and the number of publishing stars.…”

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

“…Similar studies have been done for mass communication (Scott & Hickson, 1991), journalism (Schweitzer, 1985(Schweitzer, ,1989, advertising (Soley & Reid, 1983), broadcasting (Vincent, 1984Atkin, 1996), business communication (Reinsch & Lewis, 1993), and public relations (Pasadeos & Renfro, 1992). As Hickson, Stacks, and Bodon (1999) noted, the value of such Analysis of Book Versus Article Productivity -Page 215 analyses is that they provide "a profile against which faculty and administrators could measure life-time research productivity in the major journals which constitute the discipline (p. 7).…”

“…The list of the top 102 researchers in the field, as identified by Hickson, Stacks, and Bodon (1999), served as the initial parameter for this study. In addition, though, the authors selected the names of the top 50 individuals from a study by Funkhouser (1996) in which he looked at the top "most cited" researchers.…”

“…One interesting aspect of the Hickson, Stacks, and Bodon (1999) article is that it looked at both journal articles and published books for the top 25 researchers. First, that study examined all of the journals included in the Index to Journals in Communication Studies (MaÜon & Ortiz, 1997) over an 80-year span (1915-1995), resulting in a ranking of the top 102 (including ties) active researchers in the field.…”

“…Thus the purpose of this study is to (1) equate the relative value of published books in comparison to published research articles, and (2) provide a scholarship ranking which takes into consideration both published books and published research articles. The following research questions guided this investigation: RQ1: Based on the rankings from Hickson, Stacks, and Bodon (1999), how many books do the 102 most prolific article researchers have? RQ2: Using the results of RQ1, what is the relative number of books as compared to articles?…”