Measuring publication diversity among the most productive scholars: how research trajectories differ in communication, psychology, and political science

Abstract

Examining research patterns across scientific fields constitutes a growing research enterprise to understand how global knowledge production unfolds. However, scattered empirical evidence has casted light on how the publication diversity of the most productive scholars differ across disciplines, considering their gender and geographical representation. This study focuses on the most prolific scholars across three fields (Communication, Political Science, and Psychology), and examine all journals where they have published. Results revealed the most common journals in which prolific scholars have appeared and showed that Communication scholars are more prone to publish in Political Science and Psychology journals than vice-versa, while psychologists’ largely neglect them both. Our findings also demonstrate that males and US scholars are over-represented across fields, and that neither the field, gender, geographic location, or the interaction between gender and geographic location has a significant influence over publication diversity. The study suggests that prolific scholars are not only productive, but also highly diverse in the selection of the journals they publish, which directly speaks to both the heterogeneity of their research contributions and target readers.