Citation

Watkins MW, Chan-Park CY. J. Sch. Psychol. 2015; 53(3): 231-241.

Affiliation

University Libraries, Baylor University, USA.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2015, Society for the Study of School Psychology, Publisher Elsevier Publishing)

DOI

10.1016/j.jsp.2015.03.003

PMID

26054816

Abstract

Hirsch's (2005) h index has become one of the most popular indicators of research productivity for higher education faculty. However, the h index varies across academic disciplines so empirically established norms for each discipline are necessary. To that end, the current study collected h index values from Scopus and Google Scholar databases for 401 tenure-track faculty members from 109 school psychology training programs. Male faculty tended to be more senior than female faculty and a greater proportion of the male faculty held professorial rank. However, female faculty members outnumbered males at the assistant and associate professor ranks. Although strongly correlated (rho=.84), h index values from Google Scholar were higher than those from Scopus. h index distributions were positively skewed with many faculty having low values and a few faculty having high values. Faculty in doctoral training programs exhibited significantly larger h index values than faculty in specialist training programs and there were univariate differences in h index values across academic rank and sex, but sex differences were not significant after taking seniority into account. It was recommended that the h index be integrated with peer review and diverse other indicators when considering individual merit.

Language: en