An Assessment of Institutional Publication Productivity in Rehabilitation Counseling

Abstract

Although the primary reason for publishing in scholarly journals is to help the profession in its efforts to serve persons with disabilities, such publication has a growing importance for the individuals and institutions involved in the publication process. Increasingly, publication is linked with the funding, reputation, and impact of those in the field. Despite that fact, the field is lacking a current analysis of publication productivity in core rehabilitation counseling outlets. This research was conducted to fill that gap by examining publication productivity in six core rehabilitation journals during the 6-year period from 1997 to 2002. Two ratings of institutional productivity based on author affiliation are provided. First, productivity is detailed in terms of the overall number of individuals involved in the publication process. Second, productivity is detailed via a weighting method based on author position to provide an indication of total number of publications attributable to a given institution. In both cases, the top 20 institutions are detailed. Implications for the field and for future research are discussed.