Patterns and Profiles in Faculty Publication Productivity

Abstract

Unlike prior studies that have examined the research productivity to develop various rank-order metrics of particular scholars or institutions, we seek to determine ways in which criminology and criminal justice faculty at the top 21 doctoral programs publish their research. To account for a potential diversity in faculty publication productivity, our study considers various outlets for faculty publications—journal articles, books, and book chapters—and develops composite profiles of publication productivity. Our intention is not to rank faculty and determine academic stars, but to distinguish groups of faculty similar in their patterns of faculty productivity. We analyze the publications of over 90% of all tenured and tenure-track faculty employed by the top 21 U.S. doctoral programs in criminology and criminal justice. Our latent profile analysis yielded five distinct profiles of productivity among the faculty in the top doctoral programs. Our study reaffirms the need for the use of multidimensional measures of publication productivity.

Keywords:

• Publication productivity
• academic stars
• ranking
• journal articles
• books

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1 While the order in which the programs appear on the U.S. News & World Report has changed between the 2009 ranking and the 2021 ranking, the overwhelming majority of the programs (18 out of 21) appear on both lists. The programs which do not appear on the list of top 21 programs in 2021 are University of Pennsylvania, University of Illinois at Chicago, and Washington State University. On the other hand, the programs as Sam Houston, Georgia State University, and University of South Florida are included in the top 21 programs in the 2021 ranking.

2 Emeritus professors, limited-term professors, visiting professors, and instructors were intentionally excluded from the sampling frame. These positions typically do not have the same requirements for research production as tenured and tenure-track faculty.

3 Two additional faculty members were excluded from the analyses because they constituted outliers that caused convergence problems with our multivariate models. Both faculty members’ rate of production was more than 6.5 standard deviation above the mean of other faculty members.

4 The choice of prestigious journals is based on Sorenson, Snell, and Rodriguez’s (2006) list. The list includes: Criminology; Justice Quarterly; Crime & Delinquency; Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency; Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology; Criminology & Public Policy; Law & Society Review; Journal of Quantitative Criminology; Theoretical Criminology; Advances in Criminological Thought; Journal of Criminal Justice; Deviant Behavior; and Law & Human Behavior

5 This list was based on Gabbidon, Higgins, and Martin (2010) list of top-20 ranked publishers. The list includes: Oxford University Press, Cambridge University Press, University of Chicago Press, Harvard University Press, Sage Publications, Columbia University Press, Princeton University Press, New York University Press, Stanford University Press, Cornell University Press, University of California Press, The MIT Press, Russell Sage Foundation, Routledge, Prentice Hall, University of Michigan Press, State University of New York Press, Wadsworth/Cengage Learning, McGraw Hill Higher Education, and Rutgers University Press.

6 We created our own classification based on the nature of the books. Oliver and colleagues (2009) created a prestige hierarchy of books consisting of: 1) books with original research, 2) collection of original works by multiple authors, 3) textbooks, 4) abbreviated textbooks, 5) edited collection reprints, 6) workbooks. Oliver and colleagues’ classification can be mapped to ours: a) research monographs would be their category 1, b) edited books would include their categories 2 and 5, c) textbooks would include their categories 3 and 4, and d) manuals/references would include their category 6.

7 This means the same product could be counted several times in the dataset.

8 The standard in criminal justice and criminology is that peer-reviewed journal articles are about 7,500 to 10,000 words long. To capture this feature, we required peer-reviewed journal articles to be at least 5 pages long. This rule purposely eliminated shorter journal publications (e.g. editorial introductions) and articles in magazines, newsletters, and trade journals which are primary outlets for practitioners. While both of these types of publications were not included in our count of peer-reviewed journal articles, they were counted as “other publications.” Sorenson and colleagues (2006) also excluded magazines, newsletters, and trade journals from their list of prestigious journals as they primarily have practitioners as authors.

9 The extent to which the new edition is changed compared to the original edition could vary. For example, Amazon’s Kindle suggests that at least a 10% change in the book would be required for a new edition (Clear Sight Books, 2023 https://clearsightbooks.com/should-you-update-your-book-maybe-maybe-not/#:∼:text=Creating%20a%20new%20edition&text=As%20a%20rule%20of%20thumb,it’s%20still%20a%20subjective%20decision.). ISBN (2023 https://isbn.org/faqs_formats_reprints_editions) pointed out that the extent of the change could vary greatly, from adding a preface or appendix on the one hand to completely changing the text on the other hand: “A new edition means that there has been substantial change: content has been altered in a way that might make a customer complain that this was not the product that was expected. Or, text has been changed to add a new feature, such as a preface or appendix or additional content. Or, content has been revised. Or, the book has been redesigned.” Because we could not determine how extensive the changes were in each new edition of the same title, faculty received the credit only for publishing the first edition of their book and did not receive credit for new editions of their published books.

10 Over- and under-representation was calculated by creating a representation ratio with the proportion of faculty of a particular demographic group in a specific probabilistically assigned group relative to the proportion of the demographic group in the entire sample. Values of 1 indicate equal representation in a particular group relative to the proportion of faculty of that group in the sample. Values over 1 indicate an over-representation, and values below 1 indicate an under-representation. These values are then converted to percentages. For over-represented situations, 1 (i.e. equal representation) is subtracted from the ratio and converted to a percentage. For under-representation situations, the ratio is subtracted from one and converted to a percentage (i.e. 1 – representation ratio).

11 The only reason that race/ethnicity was not a significant predictor for Group 5 in the finite mixture model was that the number of scholars was so small and the absence in Group 5 made the standard error prohibitively large.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Sanja Kutnjak Ivković

Sanja Kutnjak Ivković, Ph.D., S.J.D., is a Professor at the School of Criminal Justice, Michigan StateUniversity. She serves as a Co-Editor-in-Chief of Policing: An International Journal. Her research focuses on policing and comparative/international criminology and criminal justice. She received the 2017 Mueller Award for Distinguished Contributions to International Criminal Justice, Academy of Criminal Justice Sciences International Section.

Richard R. Bennett

Richard R. Bennett, PhD, is a Professor of Justice in the Department of Justice, Law and Criminology at American University. He has conducted research and published a book and over 65 articles in the areas of police attitudes and behaviors as well as comparative crime and criminal justice. Earlier he served as a police officer, a police trainer, criminal investigator, and is currently a criminal justice consultant to national and international governmental commissions, universities, and contract research organizations. He has been both a Senior Fulbright Scholar and President of the Academy of Criminal Justice Sciences. He has won several national awards for his research and work in the field.

Jon Maskály

Jon Maskály, Ph.D., is an assistant professor in the Department of Criminal Justice at the University of North Dakota. His research interests revolve broadly around policing and quantitative methods of inquiry.

Yang (Vincent) Liu

Yang Vincent Liu, is a doctoral student in the School of Criminal Justice at Michigan State University. He is interested in migration, sexuality, and public opinion on crime and justice. His recent work has appeared in the Journal of Sex Research and Asian Journal of Criminology.

Katherine Dunn

Katherine Dunn, PhD is a graduate of the Justice, Law and Criminology program at American University in Washington D.C. Her research investigates the interface of psychology and the criminal justice system, with specific interests in legal decision-making, plea-bargaining, sentencing outcomes, and wrongful convictions.

Yongjae Nam

Yongjae Nam, is a doctoral candidate in the School of Criminal Justice at Michigan State University. His research focuses on procedural justice, organizational justice, police training, police legitimacy, and interpersonal violence. His recent work has appeared in Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency, International Journal of Offender Therapy and Comparative Criminology, Victims and Offenders, Police Practice and Research, and Journal of Family Violence.

Skyler Morgan

Skyler Morgan, Ph.D., is an incoming Assistant Professor in the School of Criminology, Criminal Justice, and Emergency Management at California State University, Long Beach. His research interests include developmental and life-course criminology, corrections, and gender/sexuality in the criminal justice system. His previous work has been featured in Crime & Delinquency, Homicide Studies, and Journal of Crime and Justice.