Benchmarking the Research Productivity of Accounting Doctorates

Abstract

Increasing attention to faculty research productivity suggests a need for reliable benchmarks, which the literature has provided. We add to this literature by providing a more comprehensive benchmark based on the 1971-2005 publication records of 5,604 accounting doctoral graduates. We measure research productivity in four ways: (1) unadjusted number of published articles in the Best 3, Best 13, Best 24, and Best 40 journals, (2) published articles adjusted for journal quality scores, (3) published articles adjusted for co-authorship, and (4) published articles adjusted for both coauthorship and journal quality. We find evidence that average publication productivity of accounting faculty per year has steadily increased over the 35 years under study. We also analyze research percentiles and the top 10 most productive faculty (based on the most conservative measure of published articles adjusted for both co-authorship and journal quality) from 1971-2005 to identify benchmarks. The first analysis shows that some 75% of faculty never publish in the top three journals, and only publish one article in the Best 13, two in the Best 24, and six in the Best 40 journals. The top-10 faculty analysis generally reveals no significant differences in the rank orderings of faculty by the four productivity measures, but highly significant differences for all faculty for each of the 35 years under study.These results indicate that top researchers remain productive regardless of the productivity measure used to evaluate them. Multivariate tests reveal effects for gender (male faculty generally scoring higher than female faculty), school of affiliation (faculty at doctoral granting institutions as significantly more productive — especially in the higher level journals — than their counterparts at non-PhD schools), professorial rank (professors scoring higher than those in administrative and other roles), and teaching years since doctorate (those with 10 years of service since doctoral year being more productive than those with 11 years or more). The benchmarks identified in the study can help with tenure, promotion, merit pay, appointment and renewal of chaired professorships, and other resource allocation decisions.