Race and Publishing in Sociology

Abstract

A literature on the relationship between race and publication productivity in academia is under-developed. Using the field of sociology, we present publication and related career data from the CVs of 539 tenure-line faculty who work in one of three tiers, indicated by National Research Council rankings, and who belong to one of three professional cohorts, constructed by the year in which they earned their Ph.D.s. The study examines the publication patterns among four groups: whites, African Americans, Latinos, and Asians. African Americans and Latinos publish peer-reviewed sole-authored articles in smaller, but not substantially smaller, proportions than whites and Asians, a pattern manifest across organizational tiers but which attenuates the younger the cohort. Whites and Asians are substantially more likely to co-author article work. Whites and faculty of color publish academic books in roughly equal proportions. Race differences in publication in two general journals, the American Sociological Review and the American Journal of Sociology, are more sharply graded by race but not as substantially as one might expect given the identified specialty areas in which members of these groups predominantly work. We rely upon work on the relationship between race and the academic profession to situate the analysis. We identify methodological preferences of work as a key source to account for the observed patterns associated with publication and race. We also discuss our findings in relation to work on racial inequality in higher education.