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What can university administrators do to increase the publication and citation scores of their faculty members?

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Abstract

Studies on publication and citation scores tend to focus mostly on frequently published and cited scholars. This paper contributes to advancing knowledge by simultaneously looking into both high and low performing scholars, including non-publishing scholars, and by focusing on factors increasing or impeding scholarly performances. To this end, two complementary sources of data are used: (1) data from ISI web of science on publications and citations of scholars from 35 Canadian business schools and, and (2) survey data on factors explaining the productivity and impact performances of these scholars. The analysis of the data reveals five scholar profiles: (i) non-publishing scholars; (ii) low performing scholars; (iii) frequently publishing scholars; (iv) frequently cited scholars and; (v) high-impact frequently publishing scholars. Statistical modeling is then used to look into factors that explain why scholars are any of these performance configuration rather another. Two major results emerge: first, scholars in the low performing profile differ from those in the non-publishing profile only by being in top tier universities and by having high levels of funding from research councils. Second, scholars who publish frequently and are frequently cited differ from those in the low performing profile in many ways: they are full professors, they dedicate more time to their research activities, they receive all their research funding from research councils, and, finally, they are located in top tier universities. The last part of the paper discusses policy implications for the development of research skills by university managers willing to increase the publication and citation scores of their faculty members.

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Notes

  1. For details of how Maclean’s ranks universities each year, see: http://www.macleans.ca/education/unirankings/measuring-excellence-2-2/. Retrieved December, 2014.

  2. Undergraduate and Comprehensive universities are ranked on 13 performance measures; Medical Doctoral universities are ranked on 14.

  3. For a complete explanation of the methodology, see: http://www.shanghairanking.com/ARWU-Methodology-2013.html. Retrieved December, 2014.

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Acknowledgments

The authors would like to acknowledge financial assistance provided by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. We also would like to thank all the faculty members of Canadian business schools who participated in our survey.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Management, Faculty of Business, Laval University, 2325 rue de l’Université, Québec City, QC, G1V 0A6, Canada

    Nabil Amara, Réjean Landry & Norrin Halilem

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  1. Nabil Amara
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  2. Réjean Landry
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  3. Norrin Halilem
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Correspondence to Nabil Amara.

Appendices

Appendix 1

See Table 4.

Table 4 Non-parametric correlationsa between the GS and WoS databases regarding the contributions, citations and h-index of B scholars
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Appendix 2

See Table 5.

Table 5 Distribution of faculty members regarding their total number of contributions in WoS
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Appendix 3

See Table 6.

Table 6 Comparison of means of total number of papers published between faculty members in the FS and those in the ROP sample (independent-samples T test on ranked data)
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Appendix 4

See Table 7.

Table 7 Comparison of means of total number of citations between faculty members in the FS and in the ROP sample (independent-samples T test on ranked data)
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Appendix 5

See Table 8.

Table 8 Distribution of samples (FS vs ROP) of faculty members according to academic rank (Chi-square test)
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Appendix 6

See Table 9.

Table 9 Definitions of independent variables and descriptive statistics
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Amara, N., Landry, R. & Halilem, N. What can university administrators do to increase the publication and citation scores of their faculty members?. Scientometrics 103, 489–530 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-015-1537-2

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