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

Abstract

This study analyzed the productivity of top scholars in the field in terms of published books in order 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 list of the top 102 researchers in the field, as identified by Hickson, Stacks, and Bodon (1999) and 29 additional researchers identified by Funkhouser (1996) as the top “most cited”; researchers served as the parameters for this study. The total number of articles from those researchers (2,687) was divided by the number of books they had written (426), producing an article‐to‐book ratio of 6.3. Each book was multiplied by that coefficient and that number was added to the number of articles for each author to produce a ranking of the top 100 prolific researchers in communication, based on a combination of both articles and books published.