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##  Assessing Faculty Publication Productivity: Issues of Equity. ERIC              Digest.                                                                      

Faculty publishing productivity is often used as an index of                    departmental and institutional prestige and is strongly associated              with an individual faculty member's reputation, visibility, and                 advancement in the academic reward structure, particularly at                   research institutions. Lower levels of scholarly productivity, as               reflected by quantity of publications, is one explanation that                  focuses on why women and minorities have not progressed more rapidly            in the academic reward structure; why they continue to be promoted              at slower and lower rates than majority, male academics; and why                they are concentrated in less prestigious institutions.                         Understanding the factors associated with publishing productivity               and how gender and race are insinuated in traditional criteria, used            to assess faculty research productivity, can assist academic                    administrators in defining methods of shaping institutional reward              structures in ways that advance the careers of a heterogeneous                  faculty. 
An overwhelming amount of research has been published                about faculty research performance. A subset of this literature                 addresses variations by gender and race in publication productivity             and in the impact of the criteria used to measure it. This study                provides a synthesis of the research literature about how gender is             a factor in publishing productivity. The discussion extends John                Creswell's 1985 ASHE-ERIC Higher Education Report on faculty                    research performance by summarizing the literature, produced since              its publication, and in the focus on the role of gender. 
The                  literature about gender differences in faculty productivity is                  grounded in the work of a group of scholars, primarily in sociology             and the sociology of science, who have contributed to the study of              women's success in science careers in science and to stratification             in higher education. It is supplemented by the insights of feminists            exploring the experiences of academic women and the feminist                    critique of traditional measures of research productivity. 
This               study explores publication productivity, not other aspects of                   faculty work performance, such as teaching or service. The focus is             on faculty, because they produce the majority of scholarly                      publications at doctoral granting institutions. 
In addition to                those initiating research in the area, academics, such as department            heads or deans, who have oversight for promotion and tenure                     decisions, will find the topic of faculty publishing productivity to            be relevant. It is most germane to settings where research and                  scholarly publications are considered central to rewards. It will be            particularly useful for academics called to judge the records of                colleagues in a number of academic fields as well as those trying to            understand the broader context of their own publishing                          productivity. 
There are several major questions about gender and              race differences in faculty publishing productivity: ARE THERE                SIGNIFICANT GENDER AND RACE DIFFERENCES IN                                      PUBLISHING

PRODUCTIVITY?Although there are large variations              by discipline, the majority of male and female faculty members at               four-year institutions produce a dozen or fewer articles in academic            or professional journals over their careers. While gender                       differences in average publication rates appear to have narrowed in             many fields (Blackburn & Lawrence, 1996), particularly when a                   relatively short time frame is used for study, women are                        significantly less likely than men to be among the top producers of             publications in their fields. This small group of highly prolific               writers account for a large proportion of the literature produced in            an academic field (Cole & Singer, 1991). The relative absence of the            voices of women and minorities in widely cited literature is                    explained in part by the fact that few women and minorities are                 among prolific authors. Their under- representation among the                   prolific and over-representation among nonpublishers is the major               reason for the characterization of faculty women as being less                  productive than faculty men. HOW ARE TRADITIONAL MEASURES OF                  PUBLICATION QUANTITY AND QUALITY

INFLUENCED BY GENDER?On                 average, gender differences in institutional rewards, such as tenure            and salary, remain even when publishing productivity is controlled.             In other words, women generally receive fewer resources and                     recognition than men for comparable productivity (Long & Fox, 1995).            This leads to the conclusion that stratification in science, or the             concentration of women and minorities in the lower ranks and at less            prestigious institutions, cannot fully be justified by the                      assumption that impersonal, universal criteria are equitably                    applied (Long & Fox, 1995). WHAT EXPLAINS WHY SUCH A SMALL GROUP              OF FACULTY ARE PROLIFIC?Although the number of women is                     minuscule, prolific male and female publishers probably are more                similar than dissimilar. Prolific writers are generally senior                  scholars at doctoral granting institutions whose interest in                    research, work assignment, and access to resources have coalesced to            support a commitment to research that is sustained over decades.                Many widely recognized authors who have made a substantial                      contribution to the knowledge in an academic field, such as through             a noteworthy book, are not prolific writers. 
Institutional                    policies and practices contribute, but do not determine, whether a              faculty member initiates and sustains a substantial record of                   scholarly publishing. The value awarded to scholarly publishing in              the institutional reward structure is most instrumental in                      determining whether a faculty member initiates a publishing record              early in his or her career as a faculty member. The institution                 plays the most significant role in helping a faculty member to                  sustain a commitment to publishing through a work assignment. Time              devoted to research and interest in research are stronger predictors            of career research productivity than the institutional reward                   structure, including salary (Dill 1986). 
Factors that are external            to the institution play a central role to sustaining the                        productivity of prolific scholars, and colleagues who are external              to the institution are the primary source of recognition and                    reinforcement for prolific writers. Lack of engagement in                       influential networks is one reason that the institutional reward                structure may be even more influential to women's productivity than             it is to men's. WHY ARE SO FEW WOMEN AND MINORITIES AMONG THOSE               WHO ARE PROLIFIC?Prolific writers are disproportionately likely             to be white males because the primary criteria used to define                   productivity, quantity of journal articles and citations to them,               reflect career paths, work assignments, interests, and access to                resources that are much more characteristic of white men than most              women and minorities. This suggests that, in addition to examining              the question of whether traditional productivity criteria are                   equitably applied, it is essential to examine the question of                   whether  productivity criteria are equitable. WHAT ARE THE                    IMPLICATIONS FOR PRACTICE?A major implication from a synthesis              of the research literature is the suggestion that one way to create             a more heterogeneous faculty is to recognize a broad range of                   scholarly activities as making a contribution to the production and             communication of knowledge. Diversifying the faculty in the United              States requires diversifying the criteria used to judge their work              performance. Traditional measures of impact or utility of                       publications, such as citations, must be expanded to recognize that             academics are just one of many communities that are impacted by the             production of new knowledge. New, convenient methods are needed to              assess the impact of a variety of forms of scholarly communication,             such as through unpublished works, conference, presentations,                   speeches, and the ever expanding electronic venues of                           communication. 
There is almost no research about variations by                race, and the correlates of publishing productivity or to                       substantiate the hypothesis that traditional measures of publishing             productivity impact all or some minorities in the same ways they                have been suggested in this text to impact faculty women. The                   characteristics of those acknowledged as authorities, can be                    explored by assessing the extent that collegial networks and the                communication of knowledge is gender and race                                   segregated. REFERENCESBlackburn, R. T., and Lawrence, J. H.               1996. Faculty at Work. Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins University              Press. 
Cole, J. R., and Singer, B. 1991. A theory of limited                  differences: Explaining the productivity  puzzle in science. In H.              Zuckerman, J. R. Cole, and J. T. Bruer (Eds.), The Outer Circle:                Women In The Scientific Community (pp. 277-310). New York:                      Norton. 
Creswell, J. W. 1985. Faculty Research Performance:                   Lessons from the Science and Social Sciences. ASHE-ERIC Higher                  Education Report No. 4. Washington, DC: Association for the Study of            Higher Education. 92 pp. 
Dill, D. D. 1986. Research As A Scholarly            Activity: Context and Culture. In J. W. Creswell (Ed.), Measuring               Faculty Research Performance (pp. 7-24). New Directions for                     Institutional Research, No. 50. Volume XIII, No. 2. San Francisco:              Jossey Bass Publishers. 
Long, J. S., and Fox, M. F. 1995.                     Scientific Careers: Universalism and Particularism. Annual Review of            Sociology, 21, 45-71. 
This ERIC digest is based on a full-length              report in the ASHE-ERIC Higher Education Report series Volume 26,               Number 2, Assessing Faculty Publication Productivity: Issues of                 Equity by Elizabeth G. Creamer. This report was prepared by the ERIC            Clearinghouse on Higher Education in cooperation with the                       Association for the Study of Higher Education and published by the              Graduate School of Education and Human Development at the George                Washington University. 
This publication was partially prepared                with funding from the Office of Educational Research and                        Improvement, U.S. Department of Education, under contract no.                   RR-93-002008. The opinions expressed here do not necessarily reflect            the positions or policies of OERI or the department.                         **Title:** Assessing Faculty Publication Productivity: Issues of Equity. ERIC              Digest.                                                                      **Note:** For the full report, see HE 031 293.                                         **Document Type:** Information Analyses---ERIC Information Analysis Products (IAPs) (071); Information Analyses---ERIC Digests (Selected) in Full Text (073); **Available From:** ERIC Clearinghouse on Higher Education, One Dupont Circle, N.W.,                Suite 630, Washington, DC; phone: 800-773-3742; e-mail:                         [email protected]; 20036-1183 (free).                                       **Descriptors:**  College Faculty, Faculty College Relationship,  Faculty Evaluation,             Faculty Publishing, Faculty Workload, Females, Higher Education,               Minority Group Teachers,  Productivity, Racial Factors, Scholarship,             Sex Differences, Writing for Publication                                    **Identifiers:** ERIC Digests                                                                 
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