Researchers in Music Education/Therapy: Analysis of Publications, Citations, and Retrievability of Work

Abstract

This study offers a look at accepted standards for evaluation of eminence and productivity in the scientific community and updates the database established by Standley (1984) from the contents of the three premier journals in the field of music education/therapy research: the Journal of Research in Music Education (JRME), the Bulletin of the Council for Research in Music Education (CRME), and the Journal of Music Therapy (JMT). Data from the last 10 years were combined with those in the prior study (inception of the journals through 1982) to identify music researchers with the most publications in the three journals evaluated, to identify the most productive universities in contributing to the research literature, and to identify the most-cited scholars in the field for a period representing a span of more than 40 years. Due to the advent and reliance upon computerized literature searches, the classification of productive authors' research by specialists outside the field was also analyzed to ascertain retrievability. Generally, these results showed that, on average, only 50% of selected authors' works were retrievable via combined searches of ERIC and PsycLit and that most authors' studies were labeled with great diversity. Implications for standards of evaluating eminence, for the ongoing compilation of eminence/productivity data, and for use of computerized databases to locate research are discussed.