Graduate Training, Current Affiliation and Publishing Books in Political Science

Abstract

Scores of studies have measured the quality of political science departments. Generally speaking, these studies have taken two forms. Many have relied on scholars' survey responses to construct rankings of the major departments. For example, almost 50 years ago Keniston (1957) interviewed 25 department chairpersons and asked them to assess the quality of various programs, and, much more recently, the National Research Council (NRC 1995) asked 100 political scientists to rate the “scholarly quality of program faculty” in the nation's political science doctoral departments. In response to these opinion-based rankings, a number of researchers have developed what they claim to be more objective measures of department quality based on the research productivity of the faculty (Ballard and Mitchell 1998; Miller, Tien, and Peebler 1996; Robey 1979). While department rankings using these two methods are often similar, there are always noteworthy differences and these have generated an additional literature that explores the relationship between the rating systems (Garand and Graddy 1999; Jackman and Siverson 1996; Katz and Eagles 1996; Miller, Tien, and Peebler 1996).

Social Networks in Political Science: Hiring and Placement of Ph.D.s, 1960–2002

“…There are numerous way to rank departments, from citation counts or publication rates of faculty, to dollar value of grants received, to faculty memberships in organizations such as the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and there may be multiple dimensions of success, e.g., some schools may simply be especially good at turning out scholars who get jobs at highly ranked departments and have distinguished careers in the discipline~see, for example, Masuoka, Grofman, and Feld 2007a;Miller, Tien, and Peebler 1996;Rice, McCormick, and Bergmann 2002!. Often measures are based simply on reputation or on perceptions about the quality of the department in the minds of those doing the ranking Somit and Tanenhaus 1964!. For example, U.S. News and World Report, which compiles a list of the best departments based on surveys of department chairs, is an example of a reputation ranking.…”

Promise and Performance: An Evaluation of Journals in International Relations

“…Here, the subject has alternatively been the connection between graduate training and productivity (McCormick and Bernick 1982;Rice, McCormick, and Bergmann 2002), the gender gap in publishing (Mathews and Anderson 2001), and geographically based divides in publishing (Aydinli and Mathews 2000). Although most investigations of the discipline deal with publishing in academic journals, two focused on book publishing (Mathews and Anderson 2001;Rice, McCormick, and Bergmann 2002). Goldmann (1995), Norris (1997), and Waever (1998), all compare US and European scholarship.…”

“…The eclecticism or parochialism of current international relations scholarship can be investigated in two ways: (1) the range of subject matter and methodologies used in studying that subject matter; and (2) the range of scholars producing that scholarship. Previous studies have addressed aspects of each, focusing either on political science generally or on international relations specifically (McCormick and Bernick 1982;Goldmann 1995;Norris 1997;Waever 1998;Aydinli and Mathews 2000;Mathews and Anderson 2001;Rice, McCormick, and Bergmann 2002).…”

Trends of e-Government Research. Contextualization and Research Opportunities

“…As indicated above, some previous studies have examined doctoral dissertations or their summaries, books or other sources of knowledge dissemination (Rice et al, 2002). However, we have preferred to use English-language academic and/or professional journals with major international impact (Braadbaart & Yusnandarshah, 2008).…”