Author Affiliations in Six Major Social Work Journals: Top Producing Authors and Institutions

Background and Purpose: Institutional rankings have been cited as important functions of performance and as a means of attracting resources (Kirk, Kil, & Corcoran, 2009), and also as being wrought with controversy and critique (Farrell & Van der Werf, 2007). The purpose of the current study was to catalog institutional affiliations of authors publishing in six major social work journals between 2009 and 2013 to identify the top producing academic institutions, non-University organizations, and individual authors during this time. Additionally, we sought to examine trends in institutional affiliation across earlier iterations of the study. Identification of top-producing institutions supports efforts to strengthen the profession (Kirk & Corcoran, 1995), and serves as an initial framework for examining social work scholarship. 

Methods: Institutional affiliations were identified for all authors of every article in six major social work journals: Child Welfare, Families in Society, Journal of Social Service Research, Journal of Social Work Education, Social Service Review, and Social Work published between 2009 and 2013 (n=1034). Only those institutions represented in three or more published articles are presented. The number of authors and institutional affiliations (academic and non-University) were described using both frequencies and measures of central tendency. Finally, comparisons were made of the Top-10 ranked academic institutions for the current study and their earlier rankings in six previous iterations of the study.

Results: The top five producing institutions were Arizona State University (84 authorships), University of Maryland (60 authorships), University of Michigan (53 authorships), Rutgers University (51 authors), and University of Texas at Austin (39 authors). The top ranking non-University organizations were Casey Family Programs (13 authorships), Boys Town (8 authorships), and the REACH Institute (4 authorships). The top producing individual authors were David R. Hodge (17 articles), Mario Bogo (8 articles), Margaret Lombe (7 articles), and Gordon Limb (6 articles). Arizona State University was the most frequently represented academic institution in half of the included journals (Families in Society, Journal of Social Service Research, and Social Work). Further, non-University affiliations were represented at a higher rate in Child Welfare than in the other five journals. Wide variation emerged upon examining trends across previous iterations of the study. Arizona State University and Rutgers shifted 10 or more places from 2004 to 2009, while other institutions shifted nearly 20 places (e.g., University of South Florida, from 23^rd to 7^th).

Conclusions and Implications: Results from the study highlight that several institutions emerge as steady suppliers of social work knowledge. Importantly, the included social work journals do not represent the entire realm of scholarly activity in social work. Further, top institutions were identified based on publication quantity rather than quality—an important, albeit limited measure of scholarship (Ligon, Thyer, & Cobb, 2012). Future studies should include multifaceted barometers of scholarly activity such as published article journal rankings (e.g., Google Scholar h-indexes; Hodge & Lacasse, 2011), institution grant funding, and individual faculty h-indexes (Lacasse, Hodge, & Bean, 2011) alongside publication frequency to identify institutions with high levels of scholarship.