Mass Communications Research Article Productivity by U.S. Academics
by John C. Schweitzer

Ex: Journalism Quarterly (Summer 1988), Vol 65, No. 2, pp. 479-484

Academicians are typically evaluated on the basis of their instruction, research, and public service. According to Bowen and Schuster, financial hard- times among the nation's colleges and universities have resulted in more rigorous requirements for tenure and promotion in rank and salary. They say, "as these requirements have stiffened, faculty members--especially young ones--have felt compelled to pay increasing attention to research and teaching. . ."1
This paper is concerned with the attention to research as manifested in article productivity. Cole and Bowers identified the schools and departments of journalism which produced the greatest number of mass media research articles from 1962 to 1971.2 Soley and Reid3 investigated advertising article productivity among academics regardless of school or departmental affiliation and Vincent4 looked at articles related to broadcasting. Other disciplines have also demonstrated an interest in research article productivity.5 The latest article which could be found dealing with mass communication article productivity dates back to 1981 when King and Baran reported the results of their investigation.6

This investigation focused on articles dealing with mass communications, including advertising and public relations. The results should be useful to individual faculty members who may compare their own productivity with others, to administrators who may evaluate faculty based, at least partially, on research productivity and to prospective graduate students who may wish to pursue an advanced degree where a great deal of research is conducted. Previous research on this subject suggests that the individual faculty members and schools and departments which "score" highest in article productivity are large, state-supported schools with a strong tradition of scholarly research. Indeed there was signif- icant overlap among the leading research schools among the Cole and Bowers' study and those con- ducted by Soley and Read and Vincent. Those schools and departments common to all three studies included Illinois, Indiana, Michigan State, North Carolina, Stanford, Washington and Wisconsin. This would suggest that these seven schools should be among the top-ranked for covering the total of mass communication research. This study combined all mass communication-related research into one ranking.
Specifically, the study's objectives were to:

1. Rank the several universities and colleges in terms of mass communications research article volume.

2. Determine the most productive faculty members in terms of article productivity.

3. Analyze the faculty members' article productivity by rank.

No attempt was made in this study to evaluate the quality of the articles published. Each article coded, however, was found in a refereed academic journal. It was assumed for the purposes of this study that article productivity is a valid measure of scholarship, but by no means the only measure. For example, no attempt was made to measure authorship of books, chapters in books, research papers or monographs. This study differs from previous studies on article productivity in two fundamental aspects. First, the list of research journals used is not the same. Second, more than one academic unit was included in some schools, while only one unit or one discipline was included in other studies. Therefore, the results reported here are not directly comparable to those of earlier studies.

Method
Nine journals were chosen for analysis. Other studies indicated that these nine journals account for the vast majority of research published by mass communications scholars.7 The journals were: Communication Research, Journal of Advertising, Journal of Advertising Research, Journal of Broad- casting, Journal of Communication, Journalism Quarterly, Newspaper Research Journal, Public Opinion Quarterly, and Public Relations Review. Each issue of each journal for the years 1980 through 1985 was examined.

Articles.

All research articles were coded, including research notes. But essays and/or book reviews were excluded from analysis.

Author Credit. Authors were given credit for an article on the basis of the number of authors. Thus, for a single-authored article the author received a "score" of 1.00, for a dual authored article, each author received a score of 0.5, a score of 0.33 was given to each author of an article for which there were three authors and so on. As in the other studies of faculty productivity, no attempt was made to assign credit on the basis of the order in which the authors were listed. Only authors identified with communications programs (departments or schools of communication, mass communications, advertising, broadcasting, telecommunications, radio-television-film, speech or journalism) were included in the study. This criterion eliminated authors identified with political science, sociology, marketing and other disciplines from the analysis.

Academic Rank. The authors' academic rank was determined in large measure from the identifying note accompanying the article. If the author's rank was not included with the article, it was checked against directories. Some 90% of the authors could be assigned a rank on this basis. Authors were ranked as full, associate, or assistant professors, instructors and Ph.D. students or candidates. Professionals, master's degree students and others were not included in the study.
Schools. All articles for which at least one author was identified as being a faculty member in a communications discipline were coded. This step eliminated, for example, advertising articles of which all authors were members of a "marketing department," or a "school of business." If only one author was a communications faculty member, only that author received credit (partial) for the article. Schools or departments were given the same "score" as the author. If three authors were from the same school, each author received one-third of a point, but the school received one full point. This scoring system follows Cole and Bowers, but seems to differ from that used by Soley and Reid.8 Although the author may have moved from the school where the article was written by the time it was published, the school with which he or she was identified by the journal was the school credited.

Journal. Journals in which the articles appeared were coded in order to provide some informa- tion about which journals carried the most number of articles. No attempt, however, was made to identify specific journals with specific types of articles. Journalism Quarterly, for example, publishes articles covering a wide range of topics under the general umbrella of mass communications. The Journal of Advertising and the Journal of Advertising Research on the other hand, carry only articles having to do with advertising and/or marketing.

Results
From 1980 through 1985, author credits in the several mass communications journals studied totaled 1,005.63. Although 210 schools and departments were represented in that total, many of them had only one or two mentions. Indeed, 30, or 14.3% of the 210 schools accounted for 57% of the total author credits during the period. The 30 most productive schools are shown in Table 1.

Table 1

Top 30 Schools Ranked by Author Credit

Rank	School	Points	Rank	School	Points
1	University of Wisconsin, Madison	49.13	16	University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa	14.32
2	Michigan State University	48.50	17	Southern Illinois University, Carbondale	14.00
3	Indiana University, Bloomington	38.13	18	University of Washington	13.70
4	University of Georgia	33.87	19	Bowling Green State University	13.65
5	University of Illinois	31.83	20	University of Minnesota	13.31
6	University of Texas, Austin	31.51	21	Cleveland State University	13.18
7	University of Maryland	30.41	22	Syracuse University	12.23
8	Ohio University	21.82	23	Northwestern University	12.08
9	Purdue University	21.57	24	Marquette University	11.66
10	University of Tennessee, Knoxville	15.73	25	University of Houston	11.08
11	University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill	15.65	26	Ohio State University	10.81
12	Pennsylvania State University	15.49	27	Louisiana State University	10.69
13	University of Central Florid	15.47	28	University of Pennsylvania	10.25
14	Temple University	14.36	29	University of Michigan	9.66
15	Memphis State University	14.33	30	California State University, Fullerton	8.99

Of these 30 schools, Illinois, North Carolina, Washington, and Wisconsin also show up as the most productive schools on each of the lists developed by Cole and Bowers, Soley and Reid and Vincent. There are several schools, however, which are unique to this list suggesting that when all mass communications research is taken into account, some of the lesser-known schools such as Central Florida, Memphis State, Houston and others are making important contributions to the mass communi- cations research literature.

The most popular journal for these 30 most productive schools was Journalism Quarterly in which some 380 authors were published at least once. Trailing the list is the Journal of Advertising Research, reflecting that journal's dominance by marketing professors and professionals. The second most popular journal by the 30 most productive schools is the Newspaper Research Journal which has only been published since 1980.

Only Wisconsin, among the 30 most productive schools, was represented in all nine journals. Maryland was represented in all but one of the journals. Michigan State, Georgia, Texas, Illinois, Purdue, Penn State, Alabama, Washington, and Northwestern were each represented in seven of the nine journals. On the other hand, Bowling Green, Central Florida, Marquette, and Southern Illinois were represented in only three of the nine. Each of the 30 schools were represented in Journalism Quarterly , but only six were represented in the Journal of Advertising Research. Of those represented in the Journal of Advertising Research, Northwestern led the way with 4 mentions, followed closely by Illinois and Texas with 3 mentions each. Northwestern also led the representation in Public Opinion Quarterly , with six mentions. Only Wisconsin came close among the top 30 schools with 5 mentions. In the same vein, only Central Florida and Temple were not mentioned in the Journal of Broadcasting and only five schools were not mentioned in the Newspaper Reseasrch Journal . Michigan State led the list of schools mentioned in the Newspaper Research Journal with 23 mentions. The closest runner-up was Bowling Green State with 10. These results reflect, to some extent, the number of articles published by each of the journals. But they also show that some schools' research activity is more broad than others.
Author Credit . Of course none of these schools are productive--only their faculty and graduate students produce the articles that are published. One might expect that the top ranked schools also have the top producers of articles. As it turns out, that is not necessarily the case. Each author's article credits were summed across the time period to determine those with the most credits. These authors, their current school affiliation and their total points are shown in Table 2.
Table 2

Most Productive Researchers by Current School and Total Points

Rank	Name	School	Points	Rank	Name	School	Points
1	Mark Levy	Maryland	11.50	23	Ernest C. Hynds	Georgia	5.00
1	Lawrence C. Soley	Baruch	11.50	23	Ted Joseph	VA Common	5.00
3	Leonard N. Reid	Georgia	10.83	23	Don R. LeDuc	WI, Milwaukee	5.00
4	George F. Stevens	Purdue	10.00	23	Vincent P. Norris	Penn State	5.00
5	Alan Rubin	Kent State	9.50	30	D. Charles Whitney	Illinois	4.83
6	Bruce VandenBergh	Mich. State	8.74	31	Douglas Anderson	Arizona St.	4.60
7	David H. Weaver	Indiana	8.66	32	Carl R. Bybee	Oregon	4.41
8	Frederick Fico	Mich. State	8.33	33	Charles K. Atkin	Mich. State	4.17
9	Micheal Burgoon	Arizona	7.90	33	Fred Fedler	Central FL	4.17
10	Gina Garramone	Mich. State	7.75	35	Tony Atwater	Mich. State	4.00
11	Joseph Turow	Purdue	7.33	35	Dean M. Krugman	Georgia	4.00
12	Hugh Culbertson	Ohio Univ.	7.00	35	Harry Stonecipher	S. Illinois	4.00
13	C. Tony Giffard	Washington	6.50	35	Alexis Tan	Washington St.	4.00
13	K. Tim Wulfemeyer	Hawaii	6.50	35	James G. Webster	Maryland	4.00
15	Walter Gantz	Indiana	6.33	40	Joanne Cantor	Wisconsin	3.83
15	Guido Stempel III	Ohio Univ.	6.33	40	Robert Drechsel	Wisconsin	3.83
17	Daniel Riffe	Alabama	6.16	42	Maxwell E. McCombs	Texas	3.75
18	Michael Singletary	Tennesse	6.00	43	Ron F. Smith	Cenral FL	3.66
19	Michael Ryan	Houston	5.83	44	M. Bruce Garrison	U. of Miami	3.50
20	Pam Shoemaker	Texas	5.83	44	Theodore L. Glasser	Minnesota	3.50
21	Leo W. Jeffres	Cleveland St.	5.75	44	John D. Leckenby	Texas Tech.	3.50
22	Judee Burgoon	Arizona	5.17	44	John C. Schweitzer	Texas Tech.	3.50
23	Wm. Blankenberg	Wisconsin	5.00	44	Edward J. Smith	Texas A&M	3.50
23	Hugh Cannon	Wayne St.	5.00	49	Gerald C. Stone	Memphis St.	3.38
23	Dennis F. Hale	Bowling Gr.	5.00	50	Sharon Dunwoody	Wisconsin	3.33
				50	James Ettema	Northwestern	3.33
				50	David H. Ostroff	Florida	3.33

Table 2 shows that 53 authors had more than three article credits for the six-year period under study. These 53 authors accounted for about 26% of the total 1,000 credits. The mean author credit for these top producers of mass communications articles was 4.86, or somewhat less than one article per year. The overall average for all assistant, associate and full professors for the six-year period was only 1.3 article credits.

Table 2, also shows that several of the top researchers are associated with schools not repre- sented among the top 30. Part of this can be accounted for by the mobility of faculty. For example, the Burgoons, now of the University of Arizona, had most of their work during the six-year period under study published while they were at Michigan State. Similarly, Lawrence Soley was primarily with Georgia during the period under study. On the other hand, these results also demonstrate that top researchers are not necessarily always associated with the top research schools.

Article Credit by Rank . Other studies have found that article productivity is inversely related to rank. This study is no exception. In terms of author credits, Assistant Professors led with some 405 total credits (40% of the total) followed by Associate Professors with 259 total credits (26% of the total). Full Professors had a total of 197 credits, or just 20% of the total credits. The remainder of the article credits were attributed to Ph.D. candidates, instructors or to authors who could not be identified by rank.

In an attempt to determine if full and partial credit was distributed in the same way as total credit, an analysis was done of the author credits by full and partial credit. These results are shown in Table 3.

Table 3

		Credits
Rank	No.	1.00	0.50	0.33	0.25	0.20	0.17	Total	%	Avg.
Assistant	297	276	96.0	29.04	2.25	1.4	.17	404.86	40.3	1.36
Associate	216	146	82.5	27.06	3.50	0.40	0.00	259.46	25.8	1.20
Full	149	120	51.0	16.83	7.50	1.20	0.34	196.87	19.6	1.32

The results shown in Table 3 are consistent with other resesarch findings that assistant professors have more article credits than either associate or full professors. Assistants also are more likely than associate or full professors to publish single, dual and three author articles. Associates and full profes- sors, however, tend to have more articles published with four or more authors. This may be a reflec- tion of full professors' greater collaboration with Ph.D. and other graduate students, but this hypothesis can not be verified by these data. It is also likely, but not substantiated in this study, that associate and full professors are more likely to be authors of books and monographs than assistant professors.
Total credits by academic rank do not tell the entire story, however. The total article credits generated by those holding academic rank consisted of 297 assistant professors, 216 associate profes- sors and 149 full professors. When each rank's credits are divided by the number of contributors, a substantially different picture emerges. As shown in Table 3, assistant professors produced 1.36 articles on average, associate professors 1.20 and full professors 1.32. Taken in this light, the product- ivity of journal articles by rank is nearly equal.

Discussion
The results of this study failed to confirm the findings of earlier studies that assistant professors are more productive in article publications than either associate or full professors. When article credits are averaged by rank, each rank is virtually equal in productivity.

Generally, those schools with Ph.D. programs publish more articles than those which do not have such programs. Nevertheless, some schools show up on the list of most productive which do not have Ph.D. programs. This indicates that article writing and publishing is at least partially a function of the individual rather than of the school itself. Still, it is hard to ignore the fact that most of the top producing schoools have Ph.D. programs. Those schools with 20 or more author credits, all have Ph.D. programs in mass communications. And, with the exception of Ohio University, they are all large-enrollment, state-supported research institutions.

These results also show that some schools are more eclectic in their article productivity than others. The University of Wisconsin had articles published in each of the journals examined, during the six-year period. But Central Florida and Southern Illiniois were represented in only three of the nine publications. Georgia and Illinois each had more than ten articles published in the two advertis- ing journals. The closest runner-up was Texas with eight articles in the two journals. In fact, only eleven of the top thirty schools had publications in the two advertising journals at all. All but two schools (Michigan and North Carolina) were represented in both Journalism Quarterly and the News- paper Research Journal. And, only half the top thirty schools were represented in Public Relations Review during the period under study. Georgia had eight mentions, Maryland had six mentions and Houston and Texas each had five. It would appear that these schools have stronger public relations research programs than the others. It is clear from these results that advertising and public relations are not high priority research topics at many of the most productive schools.

Only 11 schools had articles published in Public Opinion Quarterly during the period under study. Of those 11 schools, Northwestern, with six authors mentioned, led the way. Only Wisconsin (5), Indiana (2) and Minnesota (2) had more than one author represented in Public Opinion Quarterly during the study period.

These results show that most of the articles published by the authors included in the study are concentrated in the primary mass communications journals: Journal of Broadcasting, Journalism Quarterly and Newspaper Research Journal .

Perhaps the most interesting finding is that article productivity, based on total points, among the top researchers, averages less than one full article a year. Only eighteen of the top researchers averaged the equivalent of one full article a year. The list of the top producers includes 21 who had the equivalent of 4 or fewer articles published in the six-year period. Of course, article productivity is only one measure of research activity. Refereed convention papers, monographs, books or chapters in books were not included in the study.

The results seem to contradict the conclusion of Bowen and Schuster that assistant professors feel especially compelled to produce research since, on the average, their article productivity is not significantly greater than associate or full professors.

The results reported here should provide some useful information to administrators and faculty concerned with publishing activity. And, they clearly indicate which schools a potential graduate student might consider if he or she is interested in a school which emphasizes research.
The study is limited, of course, because it does not include books, chapters in books, mono- graphs, or refereed convention papers. And, research is not the only criterion on which faculty mem- bers are judged. But, it is the most visible to the outside world and it is an objective and valid measure of at least one aspect of an academician's worth. It is also significant to note that the Associated Press Managing Editors' top ten schools and departments of journalism are well represented among the top research schools as well.9 Apparently, producing well-accepted undergraduates is not in conflict with research activities among faculty.
References

1. H. R. Bowen and J. H. Schuster, American Professors: A National Resource Imperiled. New York: Oxford University Press, 1986, p. 117.

2. Richard R. Cole and Thomas A. Bowers, "Research Article Productivity of U.S. Journalism Faculties," Journalism Quarterly , 50: 246-254 (Summer 1973).

3. Lawerence C. Soley and Leonard N. Reid, "Advertising Article Productivity of the U.S. Academic Community," Journalism Quarterly , 60: 454-469; 542 (Autumn 1983).

4. Richard C. Vincent, "Broadcast Research Productivity of U.S. Communications Programs," Journalism Quarterly , 61: 841-846 (Winter 1984).

5. See for example, Norval D. Glenn and Wayne Villemez, "The Productivity of Sociologists at 45 American Universities," The American Sociologist , 5:244 -52 (August 1970); W. Miles Cox and Viola Catt, "Productivity Ratings of Graduate Programs in Psychology Based on Publications in the Journals of the American Psychological Association," American Psychologist , 3: 793-813 (October 1977); Karen McCallum, "Research/Publication Productivity of U.S. Speech Communi- cation Departments," The Southern Speech Communication Journal , 49:135-2 (Winter 1984); Charles K. West, "Productivity Ratings of Institutions Based on Publication in the Journals of the American Educational Research Association: 1970-1976," Educational Researcher , 7:13-14 (February 1978).

6. Robert D. King and Stanley Baran, "An Investigation of the Quantity of Articles Produced in Mass Communications by Institutions: 1970-1979," Bulletin of the Association for Communi- cation Administration , No. 37, August 1981, pp. 40-48.

7. See Cole and Bowers, Soley and Reid and Vincent, Op. Cit.

8. Cole and Bowers, Soley and Reid, Op. Cit.

9. Lawrence K. Beaupre, "10 good J-schools," APME, 1983.