Benchmarking The Research Productivity Of Accounting Doctorates

Increasing attention to faculty research productivity suggests a need for reliable benchmarks, which the literature has provided. We add to thisliterature by providing alternative benchmarks based on records of 5,604accounting doctoral graduates from 1971-2005. We measure researchproductivity in four ways: (1) unadjusted number of published articles in theBest 3, Best 13, Best 24, and Best 40 journals, (2) published articles adjustedfor journal quality scores, (3) published articles adjusted for coauthorship, and (4) published articles adjusted for both coauthorship and journal quality.We find evidence that average publication productivity of accounting faculty per year has steadily increased over the 35 years under study. We presentbenchmark measures based on faculty productivity in four sets of journals both from 1971-2005 and for each year of 2001-2005. The former showsthat a significant proportion of faculty have never published in any of the 40 journals studied. The latter shows nine years of productivity in the most recent years. This data can be useful as a benchmark for promotion and tenure decisions. We also present productivity percentiles as anotherbenchmark. Finally, we present data on the research productivity of the top 10 most productive faculty (based on the most conservative measure ofpublished articles adjusted for both coauthorship and journal quality) from 1971-2005 to identify another comparison benchmark .Further correlation analysis indicates that productive researchers rank about the same regardless of the productivity measure used to evaluate them.Multivariate tests also reveal effects for gender (male faculty generally scoring higher than female faculty), school of affiliation (faculty at doctoralgranting institutions as significantly more productive—especially in the higher level journals—than their counterparts at non-PhD schools),professorial rank (professors scoring higher than those in administrative and other roles), and teaching years since doctorate (those with 10 years or lessof 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 .

Keywords:

Benchmark , Research Productivity , Faculty Recruiting