Organizational location and propensity for coauthorship in sociology

Abstract

ABSTRACT Coauthorship has intensified as a mode of production across the twentieth century and into the twenty-first in a large number of fields. Yet sole authorship remains a publishing mode in some fields. Publishing is not only an individual behavior but is also nestled in organizations. To that end, incentives to sole – or co-author work may vary organizationally, a topic that prior research has not addressed. This article fills that void by examining authorship patterns by where one works in a stratification of academic institutions. Data for the study come from the published research articles obtained from the CVs of over 500 sociologists situated in thirty U.S. sociology departments grouped into three tiers using program rankings established by the National Research Council. After accounting for demographic characteristics and the principal research methods that sociologists use in their work, the study reveals significant organizational differences in the propensity to publish multi-authored work in a field where sole authorship remains a mode of scholarly production.