DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.3892308
title: New data on the publishing productivity of American sociologists

description: <br> <strong>OVERVIEW</strong><br> <br> This data file, compiled from multiple online sources, presents 2013–2017 publication counts—articles, articles in high-impact journals, books, and books from high-impact publishers—for 2,132 professors and associate professors in 426 U.S. departments of sociology. It also includes information on institutional characteristics (e.g., institution type, highest sociology degree offered, department size) and individual characteristics (e.g., academic rank, gender, PhD year, PhD institution).<br> <br> The data may be useful for investigations of scholarly productivity, the correlates of scholarly productivity, and the contributions of particular individuals and institutions. Complete population data are presented for the top 26 doctoral programs, doctoral institutions other than R1 universities, the top liberal arts colleges, and other bachelor's institutions. Sample data are presented for Carnegie R1 universities (other than the top 26) and master's institutions.<br> <br> <strong>USER NOTES</strong><br> <br> Please see our paper in <em>Scholarly Assessment Reports</em>, freely available at https://doi.org/10.29024/sar.36 , for full information about the data set and the methods used in its compilation. The section numbers used here refer to the Appendix of that paper. See the References, below, for other papers that have made use of these data.<br> <br> The data file is a single Excel file with five worksheets: <em>Sampling</em>, <em>Articles</em>, <em>Books</em>, <em>Individuals</em>, and <em>Departments</em>. Each worksheet has a simple rectangular format, and the cells include just text and values—no formulas or links. A few general notes apply to all five worksheets.<br> <br> • The yellow column headings represent institutional (departmental) data. The blue column headings represent data for individual faculty.<br> <br> • <em>iType</em> is institution type, as described in section A.2—TopR (top research universities), R1 (other R1 universities), OD (other doctoral universities), M (master's institutions), TopLA (top liberal arts colleges), or B (other bachelor's institutions). <em>nType</em> provides the same information, but as a single-digit code that is more useful for sorting the rows; 1=TopR, 2=R1, 3=OD, 4=M, 5=TopLA, and 6=B.<br> <br> • <em>Inst</em> is a four-digit institution code. The first digit corresponds to <em>nType</em>, and the last three digits allow for alphabetical sorting by institution name. <em>Indiv</em> is a one- or two-digit code that can be used to sort the individuals by name within each department. The <em>Inst</em>, <em>nType</em>, and <em>Indiv</em> codes are consistent across the five worksheets.<br> <br> • For binary variables such as <em>Full professor</em> and <em>Female</em>, 1 indicates <em>yes</em> (full professor or female) and 0 indicates <em>no</em> (associate professor or male).<br> <br> The five worksheets represent five distinct stages in the data compilation process. First, the <em>Sampling</em> worksheet lists the 1,530 base-population institutions (see section A.3) and presents the characteristics of the faculty included in the data file. Each row with an entry in the <em>Individual</em> column represents a faculty member at one of the 426 institutions included in the data set. Each row without an entry in the <em>Individual</em> column represents an institution that either (a) did not meet the criteria for inclusion (section A.1) or (b) was not needed to attain the desired sample size for the R1 or M groups (section A.3).<br> <br> The <em>Articles</em> worksheet includes the data compiled from SocINDEX, as described in section A.6. Each row with an entry in the <em>Journal</em> column represents an article written by one of the 2,132 faculty included in the data. Each row without an entry in the <em>Journal</em> column represents a faculty member without any article listings in SocINDEX for the 2013–2017 period. (Note that SocINDEX items other than peer-reviewed articles—editorials, letters, etc.—may be listed in the <em>Journal</em> column but assigned a value of 1 in the <em>Excluded</em> column and a value of 0 in the <em>Article credit</em> and <em>HI article credit</em> columns. We assigned no credit for items such as editorial and letters, but other researchers may wish to include them.) The <em>N</em> and <em>i</em> columns represent, for each article, the number of authors (<em>N</em>) and the faculty member's place in the byline (<em>i</em>), as described in section A.8. The <em>CiteScore</em> and <em>Highest percentile</em> columns were used to identify high-impact journals, as indicated in the <em>HI journal</em> column. The <em>Article credit</em> and <em>HI article credit</em> columns are article counts, adjusted for co-authorship.<br> <br> The <em>Books</em> worksheet includes data compiled from Amazon and other sources, as described in section A.7. Each row with an entry in the <em>Book</em> column represents a book written by one of the 2,132 faculty. Each row without an entry in the <em>Book</em> column represents a faculty member without any book listings in Amazon during the 2013–2017 period. The publication counts in the <em>Books</em> worksheet—<em>Book credit</em> and <em>HI book credit</em>—follow the same format as those in the <em>Articles</em> worksheet.<br> <br> The <em>Individuals</em> worksheet consolidates information from the <em>Articles</em> and <em>Books</em> worksheets so that each of the 2,132 individuals is represented by a single row. The worksheet also includes several categorical variables calculated or otherwise derived from the raw data—<em>Years since PhD</em>, for instance, and the three corresponding binary variables. We suspect that many data users will be most interested in the <em>Individuals</em> worksheet.<br> <br> The <em>Departments</em> worksheet collapses the individual data so that each of the 426 institutions (departments) is represented by a single row. Individual characteristics such as <em>Female</em> and <em>Years since PhD</em> are presented as percentages or averages—<em>% Female</em> and <em>Avg years since PhD</em>, for instance. Each of the four productivity measures is represented by a departmental total, an average (the total divided by the number of full and associate professors), a departmental standard deviation, and a departmental median.
description: {"references": ["\u2022\tEsther Isabelle Wilder and William H. Walters. Characteristics of the most productive U.S. sociology faculty and departments: institution type, gender, and journal concentration. Sociological Quarterly 62, 3 (Aug. 2021), 594\u2013622. https://doi.org/10.1080/00380253.2020.1775530", "\u2022\tEsther Isabelle Wilder and William H. Walters. Using conventional bibliographic databases for social science research: Web of Science and Scopus are not the only options. Scholarly Assessment Reports 3, 1, article 4 (Aug. 3, 2021). https://doi.org/10.29024/sar.36", "\u2022\tEsther Isabelle Wilder and William H. Walters. Publishing productivity of sociologists at American colleges and universities: institution type, gender, and other correlates of book and article counts. Sociological Perspectives 63, 2 (Apr. 2020), 249\u2013275. https://doi.org/10.1177%2F0731121419874079"]}