Who Are the 50 Most Productive Researchers in Top-Tier Educational Psychology Journals From 2017 to 2022? A New Perspective with a Focus on Publication Trends and Diversity

Abstract

The present study identified the most productive researchers in educational psychology by analyzing the number of published articles in top-tier, topic-general educational psychology journals between 2017 and 2022. Our study aimed to advance prior productivity research in various ways. We increased the sample of most productive researchers (i.e., top 50), used three different scoring methods, and relied on a more extensive list of journals identified in an objective manner (i.e., based on the Web of Science “Psychology, Educational” list). In addition, we conducted an online survey to shed light on characteristics of highly productive researchers and examined their publications in the target journals in terms of research topics, open science practices, collaboration, and internationalization of research. Our results showed that three senior researchers consistently appeared in the top 5 of the rankings (i.e., Richard E. Mayer, Reinhard Pekrun, and Herbert W. Marsh) and that the top 50 contained a relatively high percentage of early-career researchers (between 25% and 40%). The diversity of the most productive researchers was poor in that most of them self-identified as White (86%), male (59%), did not have a first-generation student status (60%), had a first-generation faculty status (86%), and had either European (46%) or North American nationalities (39%). As for the publication trends, we observed that most articles were quantitative in nature and that publications on average reported 1.2 studies and had 4.2 authors. Research topics were diverse, with the most frequent top 3 keywords used for publications being motivation, quantitative methods, and multimedia learning.