Benchmarking the Research Productivity of Accounting Doctorates

Abstract

ABSTRACT Increasing attention to faculty research productivity suggests a need for reliable benchmarks, which the literature has provided. We add to this literature by providing alternative benchmarks based on records of 5,607 accounting doctoral graduates from 1971–2005. We measure research productivity in four ways: (1) unadjusted number of published articles in the Best 3, Best 13, Best 24, and Best 40 journals, (2) published articles adjusted for journal quality scores, (3) published articles adjusted for coauthorship, and (4) published articles adjusted for both journal quality and coauthorship. We find evidence that average publication productivity of accounting faculty per year has steadily increased over the 35 years under study. We present benchmark measures based on faculty productivity in four sets of journals both from 1971–2005 and for each year of 2001–2005. The former shows that a significant proportion of doctoral graduates have never published in any of the 40 journals studied. The latter shows nine years of productivity in the most recent years. These data can be useful as a benchmark for promotion and tenure decisions. We also present productivity percentiles as another benchmark, followed by research productivity of the top 10 most productive faculty (based on the most conservative measure of published articles adjusted for both journal quality and coauthorship) from 1971–2005 as yet another benchmark. Additional analysis indicates very high correlations between productivity measures. This evidence indicates that productive researchers rank high regardless of the productivity measure used to evaluate them. Finally, multivariate tests reveal effects for gender (male faculty generally scoring higher than female faculty), school of affiliation (faculty at doctoral granting institutions as significantly more productive than their counterparts at nondoctoral schools), professorial rank (professors scoring higher than those in administrative and other roles), and teaching years since doctorate (those with 10 years or less of service since doctoral year being more productive than those with 11 years or more). The benchmarks identified in the study can help with tenure, promotion, merit pay, appointment and renewal of chaired professorships, and other resource allocation decisions.